Blue organic light-emitting diodes based on terpyridine-substituted triphenylamine chromophores

Abstract

Two terpyridine-substituted triphenylamine chromophores, namely 4-[4-(2,2′:6′,2″-terpyridinyl)]phenyltriphenylamine (chromophore I) and 4-[4-(2,2′:6′,2″-terpyridinyl)] styryltriphenylamine (chromophore II), have been designed and applied as emitters in organic light-emitting diodes (OLED). Chromophore I and II exhibit high thermal stability with decomposition temperatures higher than 334 °C. And these chromophores show significantly different luminescent performance due to the role of different rigid phenyl/flexible styryl unit interlinking terpyridine and triphenylamine units which have different lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) levels. The fluorescence lifetime of chromophore I is 3-fold longer than that of chromophore II and the maximum brightness of device used chromophore I as an emitting-layer in OLED is 28-fold larger than that of chromophore II in OLED. Chromophore I as an emitter in OLED exhibits blue electroluminescence peak at 460 nm (Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage (CIE) x = 0.19, y = 0.22). By using chromophore I as an emitter in a four layers device, an efficient blue emission with the maximum brightness 3000 cd/m2 and maximum luminescence efficiency 3.6 cd/A is obtained.