Deep blue polymer light emitting diodes based on easy to synthesize, non-aggregating polypyrene

Thorough analyses of the photo- and devicephysics of poly-7-tert-butyl-1,3-pyrenylene (PPyr) by the means of absorption and photoluminescence emission, time resolved photoluminescence and photoinduced absorption spectroscopy as well as organic light emitting devices (OLEDs) are presented in this contribution. Thereby we find that this novel class of polymers shows deep blue light emission as required for OLEDs and does not exhibit excimer or aggregate emission when processed from solvents with low polarity. Moreover the decay dynamics of the compound is found to be comparable to that of well blue emitting conjugated polymers such as polyfluorene. OLEDs built in an improved device assembly show stable bright blue emission for the PPyr homopolymer and further a considerable efficiency enhancement can be demonstrated using a triphenylamine(TPA)/pyrene copolymer. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America