Intrinsically Stretchable Electroluminescent Elastomers Based on Fully Conjugated Backbones for Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

Stretchable organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are capable of withstanding prolonged deformation, representing a significant direction for advancement within the field of flexible and stretchable electronics. Intrinsically stretchable electroluminescent elastomers (ISEEs) are essential for achieving stretchability in OLEDs. Nonetheless, currently available electroluminescent polymers based on nonconjugated backbones modulated by soft chains often struggle to maintain the optoelectronic performance of the devices. Herein, we proposed a molecular design strategy to balance the optoelectronic performance and stretchability by the soft-chain modulation of fully conjugated polymer backbones. The resulting elastomers exhibit a tensile elongation of 166% and a yield strength of 0.34 MPa. When employed as the emitting layer in OLEDs, the device demonstrated a low turn-on voltage of 5 V. The results suggest an effective molecular design strategy for flexible and stretchable electronics.