New AIEgens containing tetraphenylethene and silole moieties: tunable intramolecular conjugation, aggregation-induced emission characteristics and good device performance

Three aggregation-induced emission luminogens (Si-pTPE, Si-tPE and Si-mTPE) were successfully obtained by the covalent incorporation of tetraphenylethene into a dibenzosilole core. Through sharing a benzene ring and changing the linkage mode between TPE and the silole core, the emission colours were tuned from green to sky blue and even to deep blue. The non-doped OLED device based on Si-tPE emits a sky blue light with high luminance (up to 27 161 cd m(-2)) and high current, power and external quantum efficiencies (up to 8.04 cd A(-1), 6.17 lm W-1 and 3.38%, respectively).