Chiral TADF-Active Polymers for High-Efficiency Circularly Polarized Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

A strategy of chiral donor-acceptor copolymerization is proposed to develop chiral nonconjugated polymers with thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF). Based on this strategy, two pairs of chiral polymers (R,R)-/(S,S)-pTpAcDPS and (R,R)-/(S,S)-pTpAcBP were synthesized. The alternating copolymerization of the chiral donors and acceptors could effectively separate the frontier molecular orbitals, which made the polymers show small Delta E-ST of 0.01-0.03 eV and efficient TADF properties. Moreover, the polymers also showed the quantum yield of up to 92 % and the circularly polarized luminescence. The solution-processed circularly polarized organic light-emitting diodes showed circularly polarized electroluminescence signals with high external quantum efficiencies of up to 22.1 % and maximum luminance of up to 34350 cd m(-2). This is the first report of CP-OLEDs based on chiral TADF polymer, which provides a useful and valuable guidance for the development of high-efficiency CPEL polymers.

Automated summary

A strategy of chiral donor-acceptor copolymerization was proposed to develop chiral nonconjugated polymers with thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF). The chiral polymers showed small Delta E-ST values and efficient TADF properties, along with high quantum yields and circularly polarized luminescence.