Through-space charge transfer blue polymers containing acridan donor and oxygen-bridged triphenylboron acceptor for highly efficient solution-processed organic light-emitting diodes

Three kinds of through-space charge transfer(TSCT)blue polymers containing non-conjugated polystyrene backbone together with spatially-separated acridan donor and oxygen-bridged triphenylboron acceptors having different substituents of tert-butyl,hydrogen and fluorine are designed and synthesized.The designed TSCT blue polymers possess photoluminescence quantum yields up to 70%in solid-state film,single-triplet energy splitting below 0.1 eV,and typical thermally activated delayed fluorescence(TADF)effect.Meanwhile,the resulting polymers exhibit aggregation-induced emission(AIE)effect with emission intensity increased by up to^27 folds from solution to aggregation state.By changing the substituent of acceptors to tune the charge transfer strength,blue emission with peaks from 444 to 480 nm can be realized for the resulting polymers.Solution-processed organic light-emitting diodes based on the polymers exhibit excellent device performance with Commission Internationale de L’Eclairage(CIE)coordinates of(0.16,0.27),together with the maximum luminous efficiency of 30.7 cd A-1 and maximum external quantum efficiency of 15.0%,which is the best device efficiency for blue TADF polymers.

Constructing an efficient deep-blue TADF emitter by host-guest interactions towards solution-processed OLEDs with narrowband emission

High-efficiency thermally activated delayed fluorescence(TADF) emitters and corresponding well-designed solution-processed organic light emitting diodes(OLEDs) are presently attractive due to their potential for exploiting large-area flexible displays. In this context, we innovatively integrate 2,12-di-tert-butyl-5,9-dioxa-13b-boronaphtho [3,2,1] anthracene as the acceptor with 3,6-bis(3,6-di-tert-butylcarbazol-N-yl) carbazole as the donor to construct a rigid deep-blue emitter, TB-3t BuCz, which exhibits a narrow emission with full-width-at-half-maximum(FWHM) of 46 nm. TB-3t BuCz itself dispalys no TADF characteristics both in solution or in pure film states. However, the significant TADF behavior can be observed when TB-3t BuCz is doped with 2,6-DCzPPy host due to the formation of exciplex-like species in 2,6-DCzPPy/TB-3t BuCz system. It is also found that the discernible spin-flip of triplet excitons is feasible when the S1/T1states of the formed exciplex stay slightly lower than S1 and T1states of TB-3t BuCz for the other host/TB-3t BuCz systems. Eventually, thanks to the synergetic effect of rigid structure and favorable photophysical properties of TB-3t BuCz, the solution-processed OLEDs based on 2,6-DCzPPy/TB-3t BuCz as emitting layer has achieved the significantly improved external quantum efficiency(EQE) of 14.6% with suppressed efficiency roll-off.The CIE1931 coordinate of(0.158, 0.052) is typically in deep-blue region. Note that, this EQE value is among the highest echelon of solution-processed OLEDs with deep-blue emission by utilizing boron-containing TADF emitters.