Solution-Processed Warm White Organic Light-Emitting Diodes Based on a Blue Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence Dendrimer

Thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters have received much attention for the fabrication of white organic light-emitting diodes (WOLEDs); however, challenges remain owing to severe efficiency roll-off, poor color stability, and high cost. In this contribution, solution-processed hybrid WOLEDs were obtained by employing a blue TADF dendrimer, bis{4-[3,6-bis(3,6-di-tert-butylcarbazol-N-yl)carbazol-N-yl]phenyl}sulfone (BPS), combined with an orange iridium complex, bis(2-phenylbenzothiazolato)(acetylacetonate)iridium(III), Ir(bt)(2)(acac), as a co-dopant. The devices achieved a maximum external quantum efficiency of 6.59% and a maximum current efficiency of 17.34cdA(-1). The results suggest that the TADF dendrimer serving as an assistant dopant were helpful in reducing the triplet populations by up-converting the triplet excitons to the singlet state and immediately transferring the singlet excitons to Ir(bt)(2)(acac) (bt=2-phenylbenzothiazolato, acac=acetylacetonato) by virtue of the long-range Forster resonance energy transfer, thus significantly decreasing the triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA). Moreover, the emitters can act as shallow trapping centers to decrease charge and exciton aggregation. The resulting OLEDs exhibit stable electroluminescent spectra and low efficiency roll-off at relatively high current density. The CIE coordinates (x,y) vary only (0.02, 0.02) in the luminance range of 100 to 10000 cdm(-2).