journal article·2023-06Open access

High-efficiency stretchable light-emitting polymers from thermally activated delayed fluorescence

Wei Liu, Cheng Zhang, Riccardo Alessandri, Benjamin T. Diroll, Yang Li, Heyi Liang, Xiaochun Fan, Kai Wang, Himchan Cho, Youdi Liu, Yahao Dai, Qi Su, Nan Li, Songsong Li, Shinya Wai, Qiang Li, Shiyang Shao, Lixiang Wang, Jie Xu, Xiaohong Zhang, Dmitri V. Talapin, Juan J. de Pablo, Sihong Wang

Nature Materials· Volume 22· Issue 6

Abstract

Stretchable light-emitting materials are the key components for realizing skin-like displays and optical biostimulation. All the stretchable emitters reported to date, to the best of our knowledge, have been based on electroluminescent polymers that only harness singlet excitons, limiting their theoretical quantum yield to 25%. Here we present a design concept for imparting stretchability onto electroluminescent polymers that can harness all the excitons through thermally activated delayed fluorescence, thereby reaching a near-unity theoretical quantum yield. We show that our design strategy of inserting flexible, linear units into a polymer backbone can substantially increase the mechanical stretchability without affecting the underlying electroluminescent processes. As a result, our synthesized polymer achieves a stretchability of 125%, with an external quantum efficiency of 10%. Furthermore, we demonstrate a fully stretchable organic light-emitting diode, confirming that the proposed stretchable thermally activated delayed fluorescence polymers provide a path towards simultaneously achieving desirable electroluminescent and mechanical characteristics, including high efficiency, brightness, switching speed and stretchability as well as low driving voltage.
Source: europepmc · Quality: candidate unverified · Source record ↗

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Organic Light-Emitting Diodes Research · Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials · Organic Electronics and Photovoltaics

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

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