Near-IR electromer emission from new ambipolar carbazole containing phosphorescent dendrimer based organic light emitting diode

The solution process is more suitable for large-sized OLED in terms of small material usage and no need for fine mask patterning technique. Among soluble materials, dendrimers are acknowledged as a new class of emissive OLED materials that can carry both the emissive chromophore and the charge transporting moiety simultaneously. Here, we report on a new Ir(III)-based dendrimer and an efficient single emission layer OLED device by spin-coating the dendrimer itself on PEDOT:PSS polymer. This dendrimer carries a pair of carbazole functional groups on the pyridine side and a fluorinated phenyl on the other side of the Ir(ppy)(3) ligand. The latter functional group acts as an electron transporting material and the former as a host and hole-transporting material. The dendrimer device has a green emission at 540 nm with current efficiency as high as 25 Cd/A. Interestingly, we have found that the two neighboring carbazole form the electromer under the applied electrical current and, thus, that the EL device shows new near-IR emission over 720 nm. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.