Realization of Thermally Stimulated Delayed Phosphorescence in Arylgold(III) Complexes and Efficient Gold(III) Based Blue-Emitting Organic Light-Emitting Devices

• Published in: Journal of the American Chemical Society 2018-10, Vol.140 (40), p.13115-13124
• Main Authors: Tang, Man-Chung, Leung, Ming-Yi, Lai, Shiu-Lun, Ng, Maggie, Chan, Mei-Yee, Wing-Wah Yam, Vivian
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0002-7863; 1520-5126
• DOI: 10.1021/jacs.8b09205

To address and overcome the difficulties associated with the increased reactivity and susceptibility of blue emitters to deactivation pathways arising from the high-lying triplet excited states, we have successfully demonstrated an innovative strategy of harvesting triplet emission via the “thermally stimulated delayed phosphorescence” mechanism, where thermal up-conversion of excitons from the lower-energy triplet excited states (T1) to higher-energy triplet excited states (T1′) are observed to generate blue emission. The lower-lying T1 excited state could serve as a mediator to populate the emissive T1′ state by up-conversion via reverse internal conversion, which could enhance the photoluminescence quantum yield by over 20-folds. Organic light-emitting devices with respectable external quantum efficiencies of up to 7.7% and sky-blue emission with CIE coordinates of (0.17, 0.37) have been realized. The operational stability for the device based on complex 1 has also been explored, and the device is found to show fairly respectable lifetime. This work opens up a new avenue to the design and synthesis of blue phosphorescent emitters.