Carbazole-based coplanar molecule (CmInF) as a universal host for multi-color electrophosphorescent devices

Abstract

The synthesis, isomerism, photophysics and electrophosphorescent characterization of some functional cyclometallated iridium(III) complexes containing 2-[2-(N-phenylcarbazolyl)]pyridine and 2-[3-(N-phenylcarbazolyl)]pyridine molecular frameworks are described. A carbazole-based coplanar molecule (CmInF) obtained through the intramolecular ring closure of aryl substitutions at the C3 and C6 positions exhibits a high triplet energy (ET = 2.77 eV), morphological stability (Tg = 195 °C) and hole mobility in the range of up to 5 × 10−3 cm2 V−1 s−1. Highly efficient multi-color electrophosphorescent devices have been successfully achieved employing CmInF as the universal host material doped with phosphorescent dopants of various colors under the same device configuration of ITO/PEDOT:PSS (300 A)/TCTA (250 A)/CmInF: dopant (250 A)/TAZ (500 A)/LiF/Al (PEDOT:PSS = poly(ethylene dioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate; TCTA = 4,4′,4′′-tri(N-carbazolyl)triphenylamine; TAZ = 3-(4-biphenylyl)-4-phenyl-5-(4-tert-butylphenyl)-1,2,4-triazole). Through the mixing of two phosphorescent dopants of complementary colors, we also fabricated a two-color white organic light-emitting device (WOLED) with the same device structure consisting of 12 wt% FIrpic and 0.3 wt% (Mpg)22Ir(acac) co-doped into CmInF as a single-emitting-layer, which exhibits peak WOLED efficiency of 13.4% (23.4 cd A−1) and 11.2 lm W−1 with the Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.33, 0.37). In addition, the use of such device structure in full-color OLEDs has the advantages of simplifying manufacturing process and reducing production cost that are the critical issues of commercialization.