**** 9661470 Chittibabu This Phase I Small Business Innovation Research project will synthesize and develop novel polymeric materials and their trivalent lanthanide complexes and process them as thin films employing layer by layer deposition technique for advanced electroluminescent devices. Organic material based electroluminescent devices have recently attracted much interest, due to their potential applications as flat panel displays. Significant achievements have been made, including low driving voltages, excellent brightness, and full color displays. The crystallization of the small electroluminescent/charge transporting molecules, degradation of the charge injecting contacts due to the production of heat and oxidative degradation are the key problems associated with such devices. Employing high mobility electron and hole transporting polymers, cross-linking them by complexation with highly florescent, lanthanide metal ions during the device fabrication is expected to minimize the crystallization and degradation, and will make the electroluminescent devices quite stable. The synthesis and characterization of the ligand functionalized polymers, and the complexation of the lanthanide ions with these polymers employing layer by layer deposition technique will be addressed. Experiments to evaluate the performance, on the novel polymer/lanthanide complex based electroluminescent devices will be carried out. Stable and high performance electroluminescent devices are expected. The approach of utilizing novel layer by layer cross-linking of the luminescent electron and hole transporting polymers using highly flourescent lanthanide metal ions will minimize the degradation of the electroluminescent devices and will enhance the electroluminescence efficiency of such devices. White light can be achieved by using the proper choice of electron and hole transporting polymers. The successful development of the functionalized polymer-metal complexes will result in more practical organic mat erials for electroluminescence based flat panel display applications.
