High Fluorescence Rate of Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence Emitters for Efficient and Stable Blue OLEDs

A lack of an efficient and stable blue device is a critical factor restricting the development of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology that is currently expected to be overcome by employing thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF). Here, we investigate the TADF and electroluminescence (EL) performance of six carbazole/triphenyltriazine derivatives in different hosts. A good linearity between lg(LT50/kF2) and the EL emission wavelength is found, where LT50 is the half-life of the devices and kF is the fluorescence rate of the emitters, suggesting the dominance of the singlet exciton energy and lifetime in device stability. An indolylcarbazole/triphenyltriazine derivative (ICz-TRZ) with the capability to suppress solid-state solvation exhibits blue-shifted emission and an increased kF (1.5 × 108 s–1) in comparison to the control emitters in doped films. ICz-TRZ-based devices achieve a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 18% and an EQE of 5.5% at a very high luminance of 7 × 104 cd/m2. Ignoring the poor electrochemical stability of ICz-TRZ, the device offers an LT50 approaching 100 h under an initial luminance of 1000 cd/m2 and CIE coordinates of (0.14, 0.19). The findings in this work suggest that computer-aided design of high kF TADF emitters can be an approach to realize efficient and stable blue OLEDs.