High-performance sky-blue phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes employing wide-bandgap bipolar host materials with thermally activated delayed fluorescence characteristics

Abstract

Abstract Up to date, several kinds of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) host molecules have been rapidly developed to fulfill the increasing demand of high-efficiency phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (PHOLEDs). Herein, three wide-bandgap TADF materials BPCN-Cz2Ph, BPCN-2Cz, and BPCN-3Cz are newly designed and synthesized as host materials for sky-blue PHOLEDs. By modulation of carbazole-units in the molecular skeleton, we find that the optimized molecules can realize both high triplet energies and balanced carrier transport properties with obvious TADF properties. The sky-blue PHOLEDs with ultralow phosphor doping ratio employing BPCN-Cz2Ph, BPCN-2Cz, and BPCN-3Cz as host materials demonstrate really high performance with alleviated roll-offs and achieve impressive current efficiencies (CEs) of 46.5 cd A−1, 50.0 cd A−1, and 34.5 cd A−1, power efficiencies (PEs) of 40.6 lm W−1, 46.8 lm W−1, and 34.8 lm W−1, and external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) of 22.2%, 24%, and 15.8%, respectively. More encouragingly, even at an applied luminance of 1000 cd m−2, the EQEs could maintain high levels of 21.0%, 21.5% and 12.8%, respectively, which represents the potential utility value of the new family of these molecules in blue PHOLEDs. Our molecular design strategy provides a practical way to construct promising wide-bandgap TADF host materials with an excellent combination of TADF property, high triplet energy, and balanced carrier-transporting ability for high-performance devices.