Electronic Properties of Two Series of Blue-Emitting Conjugated Oligomers and Polymers Based on Cyanostilbene: A Quantum Chemistry Study

One of the drawbacks of the electroluminescence (EL) polymers is that they are usually much better at accepting and transporting holes than electrons due to their inherent richness of π-electrons. One approach improving electron injection and transport in conjugated polymers is to incorporate moieties with high electron affinities. In this theoretical work, to gain an insight into the chemical structure-property relationships was aimed by controllable modification of the main chain structures. Two cyanovinylene derivatives with 2,7-fluorenylene and p-phenylene moieties in the main chains, namely, poly{(2,5-dimethoxy-p-phenylene-1,4-ylene)-alt-[1,2-bis(p-phenylene)-1- cyanovinylene]} (PPhCN) and poly{[9,9-dimethyl-2,7-fluorenylene]-alt-[1,2-bis(p-phenylene)-1-cyanovinylene]} (PFCN), were studied employing density functional theory (DFT) and time dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) with B3LYP functional. The electronic properties of the neutral molecules, extrapolated ionization potentials (IP) and electron affinities (EA), and energy gaps were investigated in comparison with pristine poly(2,7- fluorenylene). From comparison with poly(2,7-fluorenylene) (PF), the 1,2-bis(p-phenylene)-1-cyanovi- nylene unit was found to be a good electron-withdrawing moiety for electronic materials and the incorporation of 1,2-bis(p- phenylene)-1-cyanovinylene resulted in a narrow band gap and a red shift of both the absorption and photoluminescence emission peaks. Most importantly, the LUMO energies of PFCN are around 1 eV lower than those of PF, which results in the decrement of EA about 0.9 eV, indicating that the 1,2-bis(p-phenylene)-1-cyanovinylene unit has significantly improved the electron-accepting properties of the copolymer PFCN. Substitution of 2,5-dimeth- oxy-p-phenylene for 9,9-dimethyl-2,7-fluorenylene induced larger band gaps and thus a blue-shift in absorption and emission peaks, which can be attributed to the better conjugated backbone in PFCN.