High‐Efficiency Near‐Infrared Fluorescent Organic Light‐Emitting Diodes with Small Efficiency Roll‐Off: A Combined Design from Emitters to Devices

Abstract The simultaneous realization of high quantum yield and exciton utilizing efficiency (η_r) is still a formidable challenge in near‐infrared (NIR) fluorescent organic light‐emitting diodes (FOLEDs). Here, to achieve a high quantum yield, a novel NIR dye, 4,9‐bis(4‐(diphenylamino)phenyl)‐naphtho[2,3‐c][1,2,5]selenadiazole, is designed and synthesized with a large highest occupied molecular orbital/lowest unoccupied molecular orbital overlap and an aggregation‐induced emission property, which demonstrates a high photoluminescence quantum yield of 27% at 743 nm in toluene and 29% at 723 nm in a blend film. For a high η_r, an orange‐emitting thermally activated delayed fluorescent material, 1,2‐bis(9,9‐dimethyl‐9,10‐dihydroacridine)‐4,5‐dicyanobenzene, is chosen as the sensitizing host to harvest triplet excitons in devices. The optimized devices achieve a good η_r of 45.7% and a high external quantum efficiency up to 2.65% at 730 nm, with a very small efficiency roll‐off of 2.41% at 200 mA cm⁻², which are among the most efficient values for NIR‐FOLEDs over 700 nm. The effective utilization of triplet excitons via the thermally activated delayed fluorescence‐sensitizing host will pave a way to realize high‐efficiency NIR‐FOLEDs with small efficiency roll‐off.