Improving the performance of polymer light-emitting devices with chemical tools

This review presents the strategies that have been employed to build polymer light-emitting devices as far as the chemical design of fully conjugated polymers and device structure engineering are concerned. In particular, it gives an overview of the wealth of materials used as single emissive layers imagined by chemists in the quest for the improvement of the efficiency of devices with simplified structures. We give selected examples of the efforts made to synthesize materials that can transport both positive and negative charge carriers. The last part is devoted to the attention paid to highly emissive materials with a special focus on single conjugated electro-phosphorescent polymers. © 2013 Society of Chemical Industry