  There is currently a great need for solid state lasers that emit in the
infrared. Whether or not conjugated polymers that emit in the IR can be
synthesized is an interesting theoretical challenge. We show that emission in
the IR can be achieved in designer polymers in which the effective Coulomb
correlation is smaller than that in existing systems. We also show that the
structural requirement for having small effective Coulomb correlations is that
there exist transverse $\pi$--conjugation over a few bonds in addition to
longitudinal conjugation with large conjugation lengths.
