Boron-containing Thermally Activated Delayed Blue Fluorescence Materials via Donor Tuning:a Theoretical Study

Based on the boron-containing thermally activated delayed fuorescence(TADF)compound p-AC(AC:acridine)5,9-dioxa-13 b-boranaphtho[3,2,1-de]anthracene(a),a series of new TADF molecules b1-b4 were designed via adding two nitrogen atoms at the AC donor part.Density functional theory and time-dependent density functional theory calculations were performed on the frontier orbital energy levels,emission spectra,singlet-triplet states energy gaps(?EST),reverse intersystem crossing(RISC)rate constant(kRISC)for compounds a and b1-b4.Our calculation results show that the maximum emission wavelengths of b1-b4 are significantly blue-shifted by47-125 nm compared with that of a.Molecules b1 and b3 exhibit dark-blue emission,while molecules b2 and b4 display light-blue emission,indicating that these four derivatives could be potential organic light-emitting diode(OLED)candidates with blue-light emitting.Moreover,we found the RISC processes in a,b2,and b4 can occur not only from T_(1) state to S_(1) state,but also from T_(2) state to S_(1) state significantly,while the RISC processes in b1 and b3 mainly take place via the T_(2)→S_(1) hot exciton way.Importantly,the T_(1)→S_(1) kRISC values of b2 and b4 are predicted to be two to three times of that of a,indicating enhanced TADF property.Our results not only provide two promising boron-based TADF candidates(b2 and b4),but also offer useful theoretical basis for the design of blue OLED materials.