Using d-limonene as the non-aromatic and non-chlorinated solvent for the fabrications of high performance polymer light-emitting diodes and field-effect transistors

Abstract

Aiming to environment protection, green solvents are crucial for commercialization of solution-processed optoelectronic devices. In this work, d-limonene, a natural product, was introduced as the non-aromatic and non-chlorinated solvent for processing of polymer light-emitting diodes (PLEDs) and organic field effect transistors (OFETs). It was found that d-limonene could be a good solvent for a blue-emitting polyfluorene-based random copolymer for PLEDs and an alternating copolymer FBT-Th4(1,4) with high hole mobility (μh) for OFETs. In comparisons to routine solvent-casted films of the two conjugated polymers, the resulting d-limonene-deposited films could show comparable film qualities, based on UV–vis absorption spectra and observations by atomic force microscopy (AFM). With d-limonene as the processing solvent, efficient blue PLEDs with CIE coordinates of (0.16, 0.16), maximum external quantum efficiency of 3.57%, and luminous efficiency of 3.66cd/A, and OFETs with outstanding μh of 1.06cm2 (Vs)−1 were demonstrated. Our results suggest that d-limonene would be a promising non-aromatic and non-chlorinated solvent for solution processing of conjugated polymers and molecules for optoelectronic device applications.