Along with the persistent research interest in organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display and lighting technology, a new studying topic is now focused on developing thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) polymer emitters, with the purpose to achieve high-performance cost-effective, solution-processed OLEDs (s-OLEDs) purely from fluorescent-type materials. However, research in this topic is in its infancy about the designing rules of polymer structures, photophysical mechanisms and the correlated devices. In this Personal Account, mainly from our personal experience we will shortly introduce the historical developments, status and perspectives about one representative kinds of TADF polymers, i. e. the conjugated TADF polymers featuring in backbone-donor/pendant-acceptor (BDPA) structure scaffold, which shows very promising electroluminescent (EL) performance even using simple s-OLED structure. Special attention is focused on illustrate the molecular designing & synthesis motivation, chemistry & device tactics towards solving the limiting factors about the quantum yields and aggregation-quenching tendency in solid states. Further challenges and strategies towards optimizing their overall EL performance, e. g. simultaneous achieving extremely high external quantum efficiency, power efficiency and low roll-off rate, are also discussed.
Keywords: exciplex; organic light-emitting diodes; polymer; solution-processed; thermally activated delayed fluorescence.
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