Construction of deep-blue AIE luminogens with TPE and oxadiazole units

In this paper, two AIE-active luminogens (Oxa- p TPE and Oxa- m TPE) constructed from tetraphenylethene and oxadiazole units were successfully synthesized and their thermal, optical and electronic properties were investigated. By linking TPE to the oxadiazole core through meta-or para-position, the intramolecular conjugation is effectively controlled. Thanks to the intelligent molecular design and specific AIE feature, when fabricated as emissive layers in non-doped OLEDs, they exhibit blue or deep-blue emission with CIE coordinates of (0.17, 0.23) and (0.15, 0.12), and good efficiencies with η _{C, max} and η _{P, max} up to 1.52 cd A^?1 and 0.84 Im W^?1, shedding some light on the construction of deep-blue AIE fluorophores.