Amino N-Oxide Functionalized Conjugated Polymers and their Amino-Functionalized Precursors: New Cathode Interlayers for High-Performance Optoelectronic Devices

A series of amino N-oxide functionalized polyfluorene homopolymers and copolymers (PNOs) are synthesized by oxidizing their amino functionalized precursor polymers (PNs) with hydrogen peroxide. Excellent solubility in polar solvents and good electron injection from high work-function metals make PNOs good candidates for interfacial modification of solution processed multilayer polymer light-emitting diodes (PLEDs) and polymer solar cells (PSCs). Both PNOs and PNs are used as cathode interlayers in PLEDs and PSCs. It is found that the resulting devices show much better performance than devices based on a bare Al cathode. The effect of side chain and main chain variations on the device performance is investigated. PNOs/Al cathode devices exhibit better performance than PNs/Al cathode devices. Moreover, devices incorporating polymers with para-linkage of pyridinyl moieties exhibit better performance than those using polymers with meta-linked counterparts. With a poly[(2,7-(9,9-bis(6-(N,N-diethylamino)-hexyl N-oxide)fluorene))-alt-(2,5-pyridinyl)] (PF6NO25Py) cathode interlayer, the resulting device exhibits a luminance efficiency of 16.9 cd A-1 and a power conversion efficiency of 6.9% for PLEDs and PSCs, respectively. These results indicate that PNOs are promising new cathode interlayers for modifying a range of optoelectronic devices.