[1,2,4]Triazolo[1,5-a]pyridine as Building Blocks for Universal Host Materials for High-Performance Red, Green, Blue and White Phosphorescent Organic Light-Emitting Devices

The electron-accepting [1,2,4]triazolo[1,5- a ]pyridine (TP) moiety was introduced to build bipolar host materials for the first time, and two host materials based on this TP acceptor and carbazole donor, namely, 9,9′-(2-([1,2,4]triazolo[1,5- a ]pyridin-2-yl)-1,3-phenylene)bis(9 H -carbazole) ( o -CzTP) and 9,9′-(5-([1,2,4]triazolo[1,5- a ]pyridin-2-yl)-1,3-phenylene)bis(9 H -carbazole) ( m -CzTP), were designed and synthesized. These two TP-based host materials possess a high triplet energy (>2.9 eV) and appropriate highest occupied molecular orbital/lowest unoccupied molecular orbital levels as well as the bipolar transporting feature, which permits their applicability as universal host materials in multicolor phosphorescent organic light-emitting devices (PhOLEDs). Blue, green, and red PhOLEDs based on o -CzTP and m -CzTP with the same device configuration all show high efficiencies and low efficiency roll-off. The devices hosted by o -CzTP exhibit maximum external quantum efficiencies (η ext ) of 27.1, 25.0, and 15.8% for blue, green, and red light emitting, respectively, which are comparable with the best electroluminescene performance reported for FIrpic-based blue, Ir(ppy) 3 -based green, and Ir(pq) 2 (acac)-based red PhOLEDs equipped with a single-component host. The white PhOLEDs based on the o -CzTP host and three lumophors containing red, green, and blue emitting layers were fabricated with the same device structure, which exhibit a maximum current efficiency and η c of 40.4 cd/A and 17.8%, respectively, with the color rendering index value of 75.