Enhanced blue-emissive electroluminescence performance with rational donor substitution

Abstract

High performance blue emitters with nice color purity are highly desired in the commercialization of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Herein, two blue-emissive hybridized local and charge-transfer (HLCT) phenanthroimidazole (PPI) derivatives were designed and synthesized. Comparing to the 9,9-dimethyl-9,10-dihydroacridine (DMAC) substituted DPCN, the 10H-spiro[acridine-9,9′-fluorene] (SAF) substituted SPCN demonstrates higher photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) and improved radiative transition rate (kr). With the same device structure, despite that SPCN and DPCN show similar electroluminescence (EL) spectra, the EL efficiency of SPCN is about 1.5 times that of DPCN. Especially the non-doped OLED based on SPCN, the maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) is 7.1%, which is a competitive result among the conventional blue-emissive fluorescent emitters. More importantly, this work provides a general strategy to achieve high performance blue/deep-blue OLED by rational donor optimization.