Design of Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescent Assistant Dopants to Suppress the Nonradiative Component in Red Fluorescent Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

Organic light-emitting diodes are currently under research to achieve high efficiency and long life by using thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials. In particular, many studies have focused on ensuring high efficiency in fluorescent devices by introducing TADF materials. Herein, four kinds of orange-colored TADF materials were synthesized and introduced into 5,10,15,20-tetraphenylbisbenz5,6]indeno1,2,3-cd:1′,2′,3′-lm]perylene (DBP) red fluorescent devices as assistant dopants. These TADF materials assisted in achieving high efficiency in DBP devices by reducing nonradiative process by Dexter energy transfer and harvesting singlet excitons by a Förster resonance energy transfer process. Among the four TADF materials, 2-(3,5-di-tert-butylphenyl)-6-(9,9-diphenylacridin-10(9H)-yl)-1H-benzode]isoquinoline-1,3(2H)-dione (DtBIQAP) showed a higher reverse intersystem crossing rate and a smaller nonradiative rate constant than the other two materials, which can reduce the exciton loss process. As a result, the DtBIQAP-assisted DBP device showed a high maximum external quantum efficiency of 18.2 % and color coordinates of (0.63, 0.37) in red fluorescent organic light-emitting diodes. This study provided a strategy of developing assistant dopants for high external quantum efficiency in TADF-assisted fluorescent devices.