Achieving highly efficient blue light-emitting polymers by incorporating a styrylarylene amine unitElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/c8tc04411b

A series of novel blue light-emitting polymers were designed and synthesized by incorporating a blue styrylarylene amine (DV) chromophore into the backbone of poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene). All the resultant polymers exhibit blue emission peaking at around 465 nm. The fabricated single layer polymer light-emitting devices based on PF-TD2DV2 consisting of 2 mol% of the DV moiety present an impressively high luminous efficiency of 5.47 cd A −1 with Commission International de L'Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.15, 0.14). The luminous efficiency can be further improved to over 8 cd A −1 upon the incorporation of a hole transport layer of polyvinylcarbazole and the blending of a hole transport material N -([1,1′-biphenyl]-4-yl)- N -(9,9-dimethyl-9 H -fluoren-2-yl)-9,9′-spirobifluoren-2-amine ( BSFN ) into the emissive layer. Of particular importance is that the luminous efficiency remains 7.40 cd A −1 at a brightness of 1000 cd m −2 , and the devices exhibit excellent stability of electroluminescence with the variation of driving voltage from 3 to 10 V. These results demonstrate the great potential of this class of polymers for application in solution processed blue light-emitting diodes. Polyfluorene derivatives containing a styrylarylene amine unit were developed with a luminous efficiency of over 8.0 cd A −1 and CIE of (015, 0.14).