Accelerating Radiative Decay in Blue Through-Space Charge Transfer Emitters by Minimizing the Face-to-Face Donor-Acceptor Distances

Thermally activated delayed fluorophors (TADF) featuring through-space charge transfers (TSCT) suffer from low radiative decay rates (k(r)s), especially for blue emitters. Here, a xanthene bridge is adopted to construct space-confined face-to-face donor-acceptor alignment and minimize their distances down to 2.7-2.8 angstrom, even shorter than the interlayer distance of graphite and thus strengthening the electronic interactions. The resulting blue TSCT-TADF emitters exhibit peaks around approximate to 460 nm, photoluminescence quantum yields of >90 %, and k(r)s of nearly 10(7) s(-1), almost 2-10 times higher than previously observed values with comparable reverse intersystem crossing rates. The corresponding blue organic light-emitting diodes show maximum external quantum efficiencies of 27.8 % and 34.7 % with Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage y coordinates of 0.29 and 0.15 using those molecules as emitters and sensitizers, respectively.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates the successful improvement of radiative decay rates of blue TSCT-TADF emitters by adopting a xanthene bridge to construct space-confined face-to-face donor-acceptor alignment.