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A series of regiochemically varied and core size extension-modulated arene- and fluoroarene-thiophene co-oligomers and the unsubstituted sexithiophene α6T were investigated theoretically to explore their electronic and optical properties. These phenylene-thiophene oligomers show great potential for application in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), organic diode lasers, and organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) because of their feasible tuning of optical and electronic properties by the various structural tunings. Density functional theory (DFT) and the ab initio HF were employed to investigate the geometric and electronic structures of the oligomers in the ground state, and the singles configuration interaction (CIS) methods were used to study the lowest singlet excited state. The lowest excitation energies (Egs), the radiative lifetime τ, and the maximal absorption/emission wavelength of the oligomers were studied within time-dependent DFT (TDDFT). All calculations were performed using the 6-31G(d) basis set. The results show that the HOMOs, LUMOs, energy gaps, ionization potentials (IPs), electron affinities (EAs), and reorganization energies are significantly affected by the various structural tunings in these co-oligomers, which is important for the improvement of the hole and electron injection into OLEDs. Interestingly, the LUMO energy of 1b, 2b, and 3b is lower than that of α6T and 1a, 2a, 3a by about 0.12 ∼ 0.47 eV, indicating that the fluorophenyl-substitution has significantly improved the electron injection properties of the oligomers. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this work is to provide an in-depth investigation of the electronic and optical properties of a series of n-type conjugated oligomers, including 4-phenyl-6-(4-phenylquinolin-6-yl)quinoline (B1), 6,6′-bis(2,4-diphenylquinoline) (B1PPQ), 6,6′-bis(2-(4-tert-butylphenyl)-4-phenylquinoline) (BtBPQ), 6,6′-bis(2-p-biphenyl)-4-phenylquinoline) (B2PPQ), and 4-(6-(2-(4-aminophenyl)-4-phenylquinolin-6-yl)-4-phenylquinolin-2-yl)benzenamine (BNPPQ). The geometric and electronic structures of the oligomers in the ground state were investigated using density functional theory (DFT) and the ab initio HF, whereas the lowest singlet excited states were optimized with ab initio CIS. To assign the absorption and emission peaks observed in the experiment, we computed the energies of the lowest singlet excited states with time-dependent (TD) DFT (TD-DFT). All DFT calculations were performed using the B3LYP functional and the 6-31G basis set. The results show that the HOMOs, LUMOs, energies gaps, ionization potentials and electron affinities for each molecular are significantly affected by varying the aryl substituents, which favor the hole injection into OLEDs. The absorption and emission spectra exhibit red shifts to some extent [the absorption spectra: 335.85 (B1)< 370.63 (B1PPQ) < 376.77 (BtBPQ)< 388.67 (B2PPQ)< 412.93 nm (BNPPQ); the emission spectra: 391.48 (B1)< 430.11 (B1PPQ)< 435.86 (BtBPQ)< 444.57 (B2PPQ)< 463.28nm (BNPPQ)]. The radiative lifetimes (τ) of each oligomers are calculated as well. Because of introducing the cooperation with the electron donators such as the amidocyanogen in the common 4-phenyl-6-(4-phenylquinolin-6-yl)quinoline core for BNPPQ, which results in improving the hole-creating ability. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]