Versatile Exciplex-Forming Co-Host for Improving Efficiency and Lifetime of Fluorescent and Phosphorescent Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

We report a new efficient exciplex-forming system consisting of a biscarbazole donor and a triazine-based acceptor. The new exciplex was characterized with a high photoluminescence quantum yield up to 68% and effective thermally activated delayed fluorescence behavior. The BCzPh:3P-T2T (2:1, 30 nm) blend was examined not only as an emitting layer (device D1) but also a reliable co-host of fluorescent and phosphorescent emitters for giving highly efficient exciplex-based organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) with a high maximum external quantum efficiency of 15.5 and 29.7% for devices doped with 1 wt % C545T (device D2) and 8 wt % Ir(ppy)2(acac) (device D4), respectively. More strikingly, a strongly enhanced lifetime (T75 = 16 927 min.) of the C545T-doped device was obtained. The transient electroluminescence measurement as well as capacitance–voltage and impedance–voltage correlations were utilized to explore the factors governing the high efficiency and stability. The obtained results clearly show that the energy transfer and charge transport is highly efficient; they also show the photoelectric semiconducting characteristics of exciplex-based OLEDs, which are significantly different from those of unipolar host-based reference devices D3 (Alq3: 1 wt % C545T) and D5 (CBP: 8 wt % Ir(ppy)2(acac)). Our works have established a systematic protocol to shed light on the mechanisms behind exciplex-based devices. The combined results also confirm the bright prospect of the exciplex-forming system as the co-host for highly efficient and stable OLEDs.