  We develop a general theory of electron--hole recombination in organic light
emitting diodes that leads to formation of emissive singlet excitons and
nonemissive triplet excitons. We briefly review other existing theories and
show how our approach is substantively different from these theories. Using an
exact time-dependent approach to the interchain/intermolecular charge-transfer
within a long-range interacting model we find that, (i) the relative yield of
the singlet exciton in polymers is considerably larger than the 25% predicted
from statistical considerations, (ii) the singlet exciton yield increases with
chain length in oligomers, and, (iii) in small molecules containing nitrogen
heteroatoms, the relative yield of the singlet exciton is considerably smaller
and may be even close to 25%. The above results are independent of whether or
not the bond-charge repulsion, X_perp, is included in the interchain part of
the Hamiltonian for the two-chain system. The larger (smaller) yield of the
singlet (triplet) exciton in carbon-based long-chain polymers is a consequence
of both its ionic (covalent) nature and smaller (larger) binding energy. In
nitrogen containing monomers, wavefunctions are closer to the noninteracting
limit, and this decreases (increases) the relative yield of the singlet
(triplet) exciton. Our results are in qualitative agreement with
electroluminescence experiments involving both molecular and polymeric light
emitters. The time-dependent approach developed here for describing
intermolecular charge-transfer processes is completely general and may be
applied to many other such processes.
