Direct observation of ICT cations at the HTL/transparent semiconductor interface

The cation density at the interface of a transparent anode and an organic layer has been measured for several hole transport (HT) materials. The number of cations at the interface of ITO:MoO_x with rubrene, NPB, m-MTDATA and TCTA was found to range from 8 × 10¹³ to 1.5 × 10¹⁴ per cm² in freshly prepared devices. These values decreased by about 25% after one month. These cations are part of the dipole layer that results from the transfer of electrons from an organic layer, whose adiabatic ionization potential is less than the work function of the anode.     

Solution‐Processible 2,2′‐Dimethyl‐biphenyl Cored Carbazole Dendrimers as Universal Hosts for Efficient Blue,Green, and Red Phosphorescent OLEDs

A series of solution‐processible 2,2′‐dimethyl‐biphenyl cored dendrimers, namely G1MP, G2MP, and G3MP, is designed and synthesized by tuning the generation of periphery carbazole dendron. The resulting dendrimers all show excellent solubility in common organic solvents, and their high‐quality thin films can be formed via spin‐coating with a root‐mean‐square roughness in the range of 0.38–0.54 nm. G3MP, which contains the third‐generation carbazole dendron, has the greatest potential among those made here as an ideal universal host for multicolored triplet emitters. G3MP exhibits good thermal stability, with a glass transition temperature of 368 °C, a triplet energy as high as 2.85 eV enough to prevent the loss of triplet excitons, and suitable HOMO/LUMO levels of –5.30/–2.11 eV to facilitate both hole and electron injection and transport. When using G3MP as the host, highly efficient deep‐blue, blue, green, and red phosphorescent organic light‐emitting diodes (PhOLEDs) are successfully demonstrated, revealing a maximum luminous efficiency up to 18.2, 28.2, 54.0, and 12.7 cd A^–1 with the corresponding Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.15, 0.23), (0.15, 0.35), (0.38, 0.59), and (0.64, 0.34), respectively. The state‐of‐art performance indicates that dendritic hosts have a favorable prospect of applications in solution‐processed white PhOLEDs and full‐color displays.     

Luminescence Properties of Aminobenzanthrones and Their Application as Host Emitters in Organic Light‐Emitting Devices

A series of aminobenzanthrone derivatives, possessing a keto and an amino group on the aromatic ring, are synthesized and their photoluminescence (PL) and electroluminescence (EL) properties are studied in detail. These compounds emit strongly in solution and in the solid state, with the emission maxima in the range of 528–668 nm resulting from charge‐transfer transitions from the amino group to the keto moiety. The emission wavelength depends greatly on the polarity of the solvent. A red shift of nearly 100 nm is observed from n‐hexane to dichloromethane for each of these compounds. The PL quantum yields of these molecules also depend tremendously on the solvent. The values are between 88 and 70 % in n‐hexane and decrease as the polarity of the solvent increases. The single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction data reveal that the aminobenzanthrone planes of these molecules stack in the crystals in an antiparallel head‐to‐tail fashion. This strong dipole–dipole interaction accounts for the observed red‐shifted emissions of the aminobenzanthrone molecules in powders and in films relative to those in nonpolar solvents. Electroluminescent devices using aminobenzanthrone derivatives as the host emitters or dopants emit orange to red light in the range 590–645 nm. High brightness, current efficiency, and power efficiency are observed for some of these devices. For example, the device using N‐(4‐t‐butylphenyl)‐N‐biphenyl‐3‐benzanthronylamine as the emitter gives saturated red light with a current efficiency of 1.82 cd A^–1, brightness of 11 253 cd m^–2, and Commission Internationale de l'Éclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.64,0.36); the device using N‐(2‐naphthyl)‐N‐phenyl‐3‐benzanthronylamine as the emitter gives orange–red light with a current efficiency of 3.52 cd A^–1, brightness of 25 000 cd m^–2, and CIE coordinates of (0.61,0.38).     

Elucidation of the structure of a highly efficient blue emitting lithium boron 2-(2-hydroxyphenyl) benzoxazole

We have studied the new blue electroluminescent material (compound 1) synthesized from the reaction of 2-(2-hydroxyphenyl)benzoxazole with LiBH₄ according to Tao's procedure [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 121 (1999) 9447; Appl. Phys. Lett. 75 (1999) 1665] Compound 1 showed the UV and the PL peak at 366 and 432 nm, respectively. The manufactured device (ITO/compound 1(600 Å)/Al) showed the EL peak at 412 nm. However, the structure of compound 1 was not fully identified as examined by experiment. In order to disclose the structure of compound 1, we proposed several possible compounds and calculated each compound, using the following methods. Hartree–Fock with the 3-21G(d) basis set was used for energy calculation and geometry optimizations of those compounds. Excitation energies were obtained from time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) using the B3LYP functional with the 3-21G(d) basis set. As a result, [(box)(boxH)Li]₂ was found to be one of the possible compounds which had the most stable geometry structure. Its optical properties showed remarkably good agreement with the characterization data of compound 1. In addition, the structure of [(box)(boxH)Li]₂ was also compared well with that of LiBq₄ which was reported by the groups of Tao and was argumentatively asserted by Radu and coworkers [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125 (2003) 880].     

A series of fluorenone-carbazole based regioisomers as bipolar host materials for efficient organic light emitting diodes

A series of fluorenone-carbazole based regioisomers (1–4) have been synthesized and applied as host materials for red OLEDs to investigate the effect of different connection configuration on the optoelectronic properties, charge transport capability and device performance. The optoelectronic properties, thermal stability, redox behaviors and charge transport characteristics of these four compounds were fully characterized. These four hosts demonstrated high thermal stability, bipolar charge transport properties and good EL performance. Although these four compounds demonstrated similar HOMO and LUMO energy levels, the twisted structure of 1 led to the smallest singlet-triplet energy gap, which could account in part for the observation of its better EL performance.     

“Aggregation-induced emission” of transition metal compounds: Design,mechanistic insights,and applications

In the last decades, compounds with ‘Aggregation-Induced Emission’ (AIE), which are weakly or non-emissive at all in solution but exhibit a strong luminescence in aggregated states, have emerged as an extraordinary breakthrough in the field of luminescent materials, allowing to circumvent ‘Aggregation Caused Quenching’ (ACQ), which in many cases prevents the development of efficient solid-state materials for optoelectronic applications.Since the discovery of AIE, many AIE-active materials have been developed, most of them composed of organic molecules, and thus fluorescent in nature. Although a wide range of applications such as bioimaging, sensing, multi-stimuli responsive materials, and optoelectronic devices have been proposed for this new class of materials, triplet harvesting phosphorescent materials have much longer lifetimes as compared to their singlet harvesting analogues, and for this particular reason, the development of AIE-active phosphorescent materials seems to be a promising strategy from the applications point of view. In this respect, the synthesis of new AIE-active systems including heavy metals that would facilitate the population of low-lying excited triplet states via spin-orbit coupling (SOC), for which the strength increases as the fourth power of atomic number, i.e. Z⁴, is highly desirable. This review covers the design and synthetic strategies used to obtain the AIEgens reported in the literature that contain either d-block metals such as Cu(I), Zn(II), Re(I), Ru(II), Pd(II), Ir(III), Pt(II), Au(I), and Os(IV), describing the mechanisms proposed to explain their AIE. New emerging high-tech applications such as OLEDs, chemical sensors or bioimaging probes proposed for these materials are also discussed in a separate section.     

高效率金属微腔OLEDs性能

以半透明Ag膜为阳极出光面,利用MoO₃作为空穴注入层,在普通玻璃衬底上制备了底发射微腔OLEDs器件,其中微腔由接近全反射厚度为100nm的Al阴极和反射率约为50%左右厚度为22nm的半透明Ag阳极构成,由于采用了有效的空穴和电子注入层MoO₃和LiF,以Alq₃作为发光材料,器件的起亮电压为2.5V,在10V外加电压下正向亮度超过了15000cd/m²,最大电流效率接近6cd/A,大约是制备于ITO玻璃衬底阳极上的常规器件的两倍(3.2cd/A),并研究了光谱窄化以及随观测角度变化的微腔效应。     

Prism coupling method to evaluate the light extraction efficiency of outcoupling substrates

One of the key challenges in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) for lighting applications is efficient light extraction from the planar, multi-layered OLED stack. Several different light extraction approaches are being explored currently by researchers, however characterizing light extraction films after fabricating OLEDs is not a viable approach when the outcoupling films have large surface roughness and is time consuming as well. Here we apply prism coupling method (PCM), a simple and elegant tool, to characterize outcoupling films. We show the effectiveness of PCM in estimating light extraction efficiency of outcoupling films. PCM can expedite selection and optimization of various light extraction approaches without the need to build OLEDs. The experimental results are corroborated by the optical simulations done using ray tracing method taking into account Mie scattering from wavelength sized spherical inclusions in an outcoupling film.     

Molecular Design Strategy for Orange Red Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence Emitters in Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (OLEDs)

Pure organic molecules based thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters have been successfully developed in recent years for their propitious application in highly efficient organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). In the case of orange red emitters, the non-radiative process is known to be a serious issue due to its lower lying singlet energy level. However, recent studies indicate that there are tremendous efforts put to develop efficient orange red TADF emitters. In addition, the external quantum efficiency (EQE) of heteroaromatic based orange red TADF OLEDs surpassed 30 %. Such heteroaromatic type emitters showed wide emission spectra; therefore, more attention is being paid to develop highly efficient orange red TADF emitters along with good color purity. Herein, the recent progress of orange red TADF emitters based on molecular structures, such as cyanobenzene, heteroaromatic, naphthalimide, and boron-based acceptors, are reviewed. Further, our insight on these acceptors has been provided by their photophysical studies and device performances. Future perspectives of orange red TADF emitters for real practical applications are discussed.