Defects and morphological concerns in electroluminescent polymers

The degradation of luminescence in phenylenevinylene polymers is due to exciton diffusion to quenching defects. The microscopic structure of these defects is identified by in-situ vibrational spectroscopy. The authors present evidence that the defect quenching is due to charge transfer by studies on model phenylenevinylene oligomer. In the absence of defect quenchers, the authors have achieved nearly exponential photoluminescence decay with observed lifetimes > 1 ns and a fourfold increase in electroluminescence. They have also utilized picosecond laser spectroscopy to study the formation yield of emissive excitons in the polymer PPVs with different morphology. They have found that increasing polymer chain separation would greatly increases the luminescent efficiency due to avoiding the interchain excitons (exciplexes). Clarification of the nature of photophysics of conjugated polymers suggests avenues for improvement in fabrication of emissive polymers and electroluminescent polymers devices