Construction of efficient blue AIE emitters with triphenylamine and TPE moieties for non-doped OLEDs

In this paper, by merging the hole-dominated triphenylamine (TPA) and tetraphenylethene (TPE) moieties together with different linkage positions, four derivatives of 1,2-bis[4'-(diphenylamino)biphenyl-4-yl]-1,2-diphenylethene (2TPATPE) were successfully synthesized with confirmed structures, and their thermal, optical and electronic properties were fully investigated. Thanks to the introduction of the meta-linkage mode on the TPE core, their p-conjugation length could be effectively restricted to ensure blue emission. The non-doped OLEDs based on these four emitters exhibit blue emissions from 443-466 nm, largely blue-shifted with respect to the green emission of 2TPATPE (514 nm). Meanwhile, good electroluminescence efficiencies with L-max, eta(C,max), and eta(P,max) of up to 8160 cd m (2), 3.79 cd A (1), and 2.94 Im W-1 respectively, have also been obtained, further validating our rational design of blue AIE fluorophores.