Molecular design of blue thermally activated delayed fluorescent emitters for high efficiency solution processable OLED via an intramolecular locking strategy

Realizing high-efficiency blue emission in solution processable organic light-emitting diode (OLED) with thermally activated delayed fluorescent (TADF) emitters is still a big challenge. To suppress the non-radiative process in TADF emitters, compound DPS-BF-Ac featuring a donor-π-acceptor skeleton is prepared via intramolecular cyclization, in which diphenylsulfone (DPS), acridine (Ac) and furan derivatives are regarded as the donor, acceptor and π linker, respectively. Then, compounds DPS-Ph-Ac, DPS-OMe-Ac and DPS-OH-Ac with different π linkers are investigated to further explore the molecular structure–property relationship. All compounds show promising blue emission with a clear TADF character. Single crystal analysis demonstrate that compound DPS-BF-Ac possesses almost a perpendicular geometry between donor and acceptor groups and expanded molecular rigidity, leading to a smaller singlet–triplet energy difference and greatly improved emission efficiency. A remarkable external quantum efficiency (EQE_max) of ∼ 25 % is achieved for the DPS-BF-Ac based solution OLED, concomitant with the emission peak at ∼ 480 nm. Using DPS-BF-Ac and PO-01 as the blue and red dopant, respectively, the white OLED exhibits an EQE_max of ∼ 29 %. This research shows that intramolecular cyclization is an effective strategy for designing high efficiency solution-processable blue TADF emitter.