Organic electronics are beginning to make significant inroads into the commercial world, and if the field continues to progress at its current, rapid pace, electronics based on organic thin-film materials will soon become a mainstay of our technological existence. Already products based on active thin-film organic devices are in the market place, most notably the displays of several mobile electronic appliances. Yet the future holds even greater promise for this technology, with an entirely new generation of ultralow-cost, lightweight and even flexible electronic devices in the offing, which will perform functions traditionally accomplished using much more expensive components based on conventional semiconductor materials such as silicon.

The path to ubiquitous and low-cost organic electronic appliances on plastic

A review was presented to demonstrate a historical description of the synthesis of light-emitting conjugated polymers for applications in electroluminescent devices. Electroluminescence (EL) was first reported in poly(para-phenylene vinylene) (PPV) in 1990 and researchers continued to make significant efforts to develop conjugated materials as the active units in light-emitting devices (LED) to be used in display applications. Conjugated oligomers were used as luminescent materials and as models for conjugated polymers in the review. Oligomers were used to demonstrate a structure and property relationship to determine a key polymer property or to demonstrate a technique that was to be applied to polymers. The review focused on demonstrating the way polymer structures were made and the way their properties were controlled by intelligent and rational and synthetic design.

Synthesis of Light-Emitting Conjugated Polymers for Applications in Electroluminescent Devices

Stability/degradation of polymer solar cells

This article provides a review about electroluminescence from organic materials and deals in detail with organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), light-emitting electro-chemical cells (LECs) and electrogenerated chemilumi-nescence (ECL) reflecting different electrooptical appli-cations of conjugated materials. It is written from an organic chemist's point of view and pays particular attention to the development of organic materials involved in corresponding devices. In recent years a substantial amount of both academic and industrial research has been directed to organic electroluminescence in an effort to improve the processability and tunability of organic materials and the longevity of OLEDs and LECs. On the eve of the commercialization of organic electrolumi-nescence this review provides an overview of lifetimes and efficiencies attained and reflects materials and device concepts developed over the last decade. In this context electrogenerated chemiluminescence is discussed with respect to its importance as a versatile tool to simulate the fundamental electrochemical processes in OLEDs.

The electroluminescence of organic materials

Organic materials that exhibit thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) are an attractive class of functional materials that have witnessed a booming development in recent years. Since Adachi et al. reported high-performance TADF-OLED devices in 2012, there have been many reports regarding the design and synthesis of new TADF luminogens, which have various molecular structures and are used for different applications. In this review, we summarize and discuss the latest progress concerning this rapidly developing research field, in which the majority of the reported TADF systems are discussed, along with their derived structure–property relationships, TADF mechanisms and applications. We hope that such a review provides a clear outlook of these novel functional materials for a broad range of scientists within different disciplinary areas and attracts more researchers to devote themselves to this interesting research field.

Recent advances in organic thermally activated delayed fluorescence materials.

Studies on the long-term degradation of organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) based on tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum (AlQ 3 ), the most widely used electroluminescent molecule, reveal that injection of holes in AlQ 3 is the main cause of device degradation. The transport of holes into AlQ 3 caused a decrease in its fluorescence quantum efficiency, thus showing that cationic AlQ 3 species are unstable and that their degradation products are fluorescence quenchers. These findings explain the success of different approaches to stabilizing OLEDs, such as doping of the hole transport layer, introducing a buffer layer at the hole-injecting contact, and using mixed emitting layers of hole and electron transporting molecules.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/283/5409/1900.full.pdf

Degradation Mechanism of Small Molecule-Based Organic Light-Emitting Devices

A new electron acceptor building block, 3,6-di(pyridin-2-yl)pyrrolo[3,4-c ]pyrrole-1,4(2H ,5H)-dione (DBPy), is used to construct a donor-acceptor polymer, PDBPyBT. This polymer exhibits a strong self-assembly capability, to form highly crystalline and oriented thin films with a short π-π stacking distance of 0.36 nm. PDBPyBT shows ambipolar charge-transport performance in organic thin-film transistors, reaching a record high electron-mobility value of 6.30 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1).

Record high electron mobility of 6.3 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ achieved for polymer semiconductors using a new building block.

An electroluminescent device containing an anode, an organic electroluminescent element, and a cathode wherein the electroluminescent element contains, for example, a fluorescent hydrocarbon component of Formula (I) wherein R1 and R2 are substituents, which are selected from the group consisting of hydrogen, an alkyl, an alicyclic alkyl, an alkoxy, a halogen, and a cyano; Ar1 and Ar2 are each independently an aromatic component or an aryl group comprised of a from about 4 to about 15 conjugate-bonded or fused benzene rings

Electroluminescent (EL) devices

We report electroluminescence degradation studies of tris (8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum (Alq3) organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) under ambient conditions. Alq3 films and organic bilayer anode/naphthyl-substituted benzidine derivative/Alq3/cathode devices are studied via electroluminescence, photoluminescence, polarization microscopy and atomic force microscopy, and via microscopic infrared spectroscopy. Results reveal that humidity induces the formation of crystalline Alq3 structures in originally amorphous films. The same phenomenon is found to occur in OLEDs and causes cathode delamination at the Alq3/cathode interface that results in the formation of black (nonemissive) spots in the devices.

Humidity-induced crystallization of tris (8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum layers in organic light-emitting devices

Triplet–triplet annihilation (TTA) is studied in a wide range of fluorescent host:guest emitter systems used in organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs). Strong TTA is observed in host:guest systems in which the dopant has a limited charge-trapping capability. On the other hand, systems in which the dopant can efficiently trap charges show insignificant TTA, an effect that is due, in part, to the efficient quenching of triplet excitons by the trapped charges. Fluorescent host:guest systems with the strongest TTA are found to give the highest OLED electroluminescence efficiency, a phenomenon attributed to the role of TTA in converting triplet excitons into additional singlet excitons, thus appreciably contributing to the light output of OLEDs. The results shed light on and give direct evidence for the phenomena behind the recently reported very high efficiencies attainable in fluorescent host:guest OLEDs with quantum efficiencies exceeding the classical 25% theoretical limit.

Hany Aziz

Papers

Degradation Mechanism of Small Molecule-Based Organic Light-Emitting Devices

Record high electron mobility of 6.3 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ achieved for polymer semiconductors using a new building block.

Electroluminescent (EL) devices

Humidity-induced crystallization of tris (8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum layers in organic light-emitting devices

Correlation Between Triplet Triplet Annihilation and Electroluminescence Efficiency in Doped Fluorescent Organic Light-Emitting Devices