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

Nature Materials volume 22, pages 737–745 (2023)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 19 May 2023

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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.

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Fig. 1: Stretchable light-emitting polymers with TADF.
Fig. 2: PL and EL properties of stretchable TADF polymers and corresponding small-molecule TADF emitter (DKC).
Fig. 3: PL and EL properties of stretchable TADF polymers under stretching.
Fig. 4: MD simulations of stretchable TADF polymers under stretching.
Fig. 5: Fully stretchable OLEDs fabricated with PDKCD.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available within this Article and its Supplementary Information. Additional data are available from the corresponding authors upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The codes and force-field parameters used for the MD simulation are available via GitHub at https://github.com/czhangR/High-efficiency-stretchable-light-emitting-polymers-from-thermally-activated-delayed-fluorescence.git. The Gaussian (https://gaussian.com/) package is commercially available; the LAMMPS (https://www.lammps.org/#gsc.tab=0) and GROMACS (https://www.gromacs.org/) packages are open-source.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the Start-Up Funds from the University of Chicago, National Science Foundation CAREER Award no. 2239618, and the University of Chicago Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, which is funded by the National Science Foundation under award no. DMR-2011854. We acknowledge the Research Computing Center of the University of Chicago for computational resources. We used the Center for Nanoscale Materials, an Office of Science user facility supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. D.V.T. and J.J.d.P. acknowledge support from MICCoM, as part of the Computational Materials Sciences Program funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, under grant DOE/BES 5J-30161-0010A. D.V.T. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under grant no. DMR-2019444. R.A. is supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO Rubicon 019.202EN.028). X.Z. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant no. 51821002. We thank X. M. Lin for assisting us with the experiment at Argonne National Laboratory. We thank M. Zhang, X. K. Liu, X. D. Ma, P. J. Pei, C. Arneson and S. R. Forrest for helping with the experiments, and D. F. Yuan and L. P. Yu for discussions about polymer synthesis.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Himchan Cho

    Present address: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Republic of Korea

  2. Shiyang Shao

    Present address: State Key Laboratory of Marine Resource Utilization in South China Sea, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou, China

  3. These authors contributed equally: Wei Liu, Cheng Zhang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Wei Liu, Cheng Zhang, Riccardo Alessandri, Yang Li, Heyi Liang, Youdi Liu, Yahao Dai, Qi Su, Nan Li, Songsong Li, Shinya Wai, Dmitri V. Talapin, Juan J. de Pablo & Sihong Wang

  2. Nanoscience and Technology Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA

    Benjamin T. Diroll, Jie Xu, Dmitri V. Talapin & Sihong Wang

  3. Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Joint International Research Laboratory of Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Xiaochun Fan, Kai Wang & Xiaohong Zhang

  4. Department of Chemistry and James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Himchan Cho & Dmitri V. Talapin

  5. State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, China

    Qiang Li, Shiyang Shao & Lixiang Wang

  6. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Negative Carbon Technologies, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Xiaohong Zhang

  7. Center for Molecular Engineering, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA

    Juan J. de Pablo & Sihong Wang

Authors
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Contributions

S. Wang. conceived the research. W.L. and S. Wang. designed the experiments. W.L. synthesized the stretchable TADF polymers, fabricated the rigid and fully stretchable OLEDs, and performed the characteristics and measurements. C.Z., R.A., H.L. and J.J.d.P. performed the simulation. C.Z., Y. Li. and Y. Liu. helped with the film transfer process and fully stretchable device fabrication. X.F., K.W., H.C. and D.V.T. helped with the OLED performance characterization. B.T.D. performed the PL transient decay measurement. C.Z. carried out the PLQY measurement. X.F. and K.W. measured the low-temperature FL/PH spectra. Q.L., S.S. and L.W. provided the PNB-TAc-TRZ-5 and P-Ac95-TRZ05 polymers. S. Wang. and J.J.d.P. supervised the research. W.L., C.Z., S. Wang. and J.J.d.P. wrote the manuscript. All the authors contributed to the discussion and manuscript revision.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Juan J. de Pablo or Sihong Wang.

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Competing interests

S.W., J.J.d.P., W.L. and C.Z. are inventors on a pending patent filed by the University of Chicago (no. UCHI 22-T-048). The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Materials thanks Tsuyoshi Sekitani and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Optical microscopy images of PDKCM, PDKCP, DDKCH, and PDKCD films under stretching to the strains of 50%, 75%, and 100%.

The films were transferred from PDMS substrates to SEBS-coated Si substrates. The stretching direction was horizontal.

Extended Data Fig. 2 EL performance of the rigid OLED devices with PDKCM as the emitting layer under different strains.

(a) Representative EQE-current density plots. (b) Averaged maximum EQE (EQEmax) values as a function of different strains. The data of EQE are represented as mean values + /- s.d. from 3 devices. (c) Representative EL spectra at 8 V.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 EL performance of the rigid OLED devices with PDKCD as the emitting layer under different strains.

(a) Representative EQE-current density plots. (b) Averaged EQEmax values as a function of different strains. The data of EQE are represented as mean values + /− s.d. from 3 devices. (c) Representative EL spectra at 8 V.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 4 Snapshots taken from the MD simulations of PDKCM, PDKCP, and PDKCH at 0% and 100% strains.

One randomly selected chain is highlighted for each simulation and manually centred at the middle of the box, with the backbone rendered in grey, the electron-donor units in blue, and the electron-acceptor units in red.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Non-affine displacements for PDKCP and PDKCH in MD simulations.

The non-affine displacements of the alkyl main chain, rigid main chain, and side chain at 5% strain for polymers PDKCP (a) and PDKCH (b).

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 6 Characterization of the AgNW/TPU/PDMS electrode.

(a) Transmittance curve of the electrode. The inset is the photo of the electrode. (b) Stretching-induced resistance changes for the original electrode and the annealed electrode (140 °C for 1 h). The data of the resistance are represented as mean values + /− s.d. from 5 samples. (c) UPS test result of the electrode. The work function (EWF) of the electrode was calculated with the equation: EWF = hv – ESE = 21.22 eV – 16.48 eV = 4.74 eV, where hv is the incident photon energy, ESE is the secondary edge position. (d) Optical microscopy image of the electrode under different strains (60%, 80%, and 100%). The stretching direction is horizontal. The Scale bars are 10 μm.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 7 Stretchability test of PEIE_PFN-Br composite film.

(a) The chemical structures of PEIE and PFN-Br. (b) Optical microscopy images of PEIE_PFN-Br composite films at 50%, 60%, 70%, and 100% strains. The stretching direction is horizontal. Therefore, the composite film can be stretched to 60% without cracking.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Characterization of the PEDOT:PSS_PFI composite film.

(a) Chemical structures of PEDOT:PSS and PFI. (b and c) Optical microscopy images of PFI (b), and PEDOT:PSS_PFI composite film (c), under 100% strain. The stretching direction is horizontal, and the scale bar is 10 μm. (d) Raman spectra of PEDOT:PSS and PEDOT:PSS_PFI film under 632.8 nm laser excitation.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 9 Vertical phase-separation morphology of the PEDOT:PSS_PFI composite film.

(a) Molecular depth (with the step size of ~5 nm) profiles of PEDOT:PSS_PFI composite film as inferred from the XPS results in Supplementary Figs. 36 and 37. Deconvoluted S 2p peaks for PEDOT (164.5 eV), sulfonic acid (S 2p peaks at 168.4 and 168.9 eV), C 1 s peak at 291.6 eV, and F 1 s peak for the PFI concentration were used. This shows that the PFI is rich at both top and bottom surfaces in the composite film, and the molecular concentration of PFI gradually decreased toward the centre in the thickness direction. (b) Proposed 3D illustration of the morphology of the PEDOT:PSS_PFI composite film.

Source data

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–41 and Tables 1–6.

Supplementary Video 1

MD simulation of stretchable TADF polymer PDKCD at strains from 0% to 100%.

Supplementary Video 2

Operation of fully stretchable OLEDs based on stretchable TADF polymer PDKCD.

Source data

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Liu, W., Zhang, C., Alessandri, R. et al. High-efficiency stretchable light-emitting polymers from thermally activated delayed fluorescence. Nat. Mater. 22, 737–745 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01529-w

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