Facile generation of thermally activated delayed fluorescence and fabrication of highly efficient non-doped OLEDs based on triazine derivatives.

Abstract

A series of donor-acceptor-donor triazine-based molecules with thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) properties were synthesized to obtain highly efficient blue-emitting OLEDs with non-doped emitting layer (EML). The targeted molecules use a triazine core as the electron acceptor, and a benzene ring as the conjugated linker with different electron donors to alternate the energy level of HOMO to further tune the emission color. The introduction of long alkyl chains on the triazine core inhibits the unwanted intermolecular D-D/A-A type π-π interactions, resulting in the intermolecular D-A charge transfer. The weak aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) effect caused by the suppressed intermolecular D-D/A-A type π-π interaction further enhances the emission. The crowded molecular structure allows the electron donor and acceptor to be nearly orthogonal, thereby reducing the energy gap between triplet and singlet excited states (ΔEST). As a result, blue-emitting devices with TH-2DMAC and TH-2DPAC non-doped EML showed satisfactory efficiencies of 12.8% and 15.8%, respectively, which is one of the highest EQEs reported in the blue TADF emitters (λpeak < 475 nm), demonstrating that our tailored molecular designs are promising strategies to endow OLEDs with excellent EL performances.