Asymmetric anthracene derivatives as multifunctional electronic materials for constructing simplified and efficient non-doped homogeneous deep blue fluorescent OLEDs

• Published in: Chemical engineering journal (Lausanne, Switzerland : 1996) Switzerland : 1996), 2020-08, Vol.393, p.124694, Article 124694
• Main Authors: Ye, Shaofeng, Wang, Yaxiong, Guo, Runda, Zhang, Qing, Lv, Xialei, Duan, Yalei, Leng, Panpan, Sun, Shuaiqiang, Wang, Lei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Asymmetric anthracene derivatives; Deep-blue emission; Fluorescent OLEDs; Homogenous device structure; Multifunctional materials
• ISSN: 1385-8947; 1873-3212
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2020.124694

[Display omitted] •High-efficiency asymmetric anthracene derivatives as multifunctional deep blue materials for non-doped homogeneous OLEDs.•Addressing the contradiction of efficiency, color gamut and structure complexity of devices.•The outstanding homogenous OLED with a narrow-band deep blue emission and extremely low roll-off of 4.8% at 5000 cd m−2. Herein, large π-conjugated core anthracene with an innate bipolar property was employed to construct multifunctional organic electronic materials. Delicate manipulating molecules via combining anthracene core and large periphery groups, two asymmetric anthracene derivatives namely (4-(10-(4-(9H-1,5-diazacarbazole-9-yl)phenyl)anthracen-9-yl)phenyl)diphenylphosphine oxide (p-PO15NCzDPA) and (3-(10-(3-(9H-1,5-diazarcarbazole-9-yl)phenyl)anthracen-9-yl)phenyl)diphenylphosphine oxide (m-PO15NCzDPA) were firstly designed and developed. The large periphery groups 1,5-diazarcarbazole (15NCz) and diphenylphosphine oxide (PO) efficiently interrupt the intramolecular π-conjugation, presenting an asymmetric bulky periphery enveloping strategy achieving highly twisted structures, which help to realize deep-blue emission. Meanwhile, due to the high PLQY and well-balanced bipolar transport characteristics, desired device addressing the contradiction of efficiency, color gamut and structure complexity is within reach. Detailed device engineering study was carried out, in which p-PO15NCzDPA and m-PO15NCzDPA were functioned as multifunction layers. As expected, p-PO15NCzDPA-based homogenous and unilateral homogenous OLEDs exhibited outstanding performance with impressive EQEmax of 4.55% and 6.40%, deep blue CIE coordinates of (0.152, 0.075) and (0.151, 0.066) at the voltage of 6 V, narrow FWHM of 46 nm and 50 nm, respectively. More importantly, the simplified homogenous device achieved extremely low efficiency roll-offs of 1.3% and 4.8% at 1000 and 5000 cd m−2, respectively. These results are among the most outstanding performance, which provided a guide for further improving the performance of deep blue fluorescent OLEDs and simplifying the structure of OLEDs.