Alkoxy encapsulation of carbazole-based thermally activated delayed fluorescent dendrimers for highly efficient solution-processed organic light-emitting diodes

Abstract

Two n-butoxy-encapsulated dendritic thermally activated delayed fluorescent (TADF) emitters (namely O-D1 and O-D2) with the first-/second-generation carbazoledendrons are designed and synthesized via CN coupling between carbazoledendrons and 2,4,6-tris(4-bromophenyl)-1,3,5-triazine core. It is found that, compared with the commonly-used tert-butyl groups, the use of n-butoxy encapsulation groups can lead to smallersinglet-triplet energy gap for the dendrimers, producing stronger TADF effect together with faster reverse intersystem crossing process. Solution-processed TADF organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) utilizingalkoxy-encapsulated dendrimers O-D1 and O-D2 as emitters exhibitstate-of-the-art device efficiency withthe maximum external quantum efficiency up to 16.8% and 20.6%, respectively, which are ∼1.6 and ∼2.0 times that of the tert-butyl-encapsulated counterparts. These results suggest that alkoxy encapsulation of the carbazole-based TADF dendrimers can be a promising approach for developing highly efficient emitters for solution-processed OLEDs.