Judicious Heteroatom Doping Produces High-Performance Deep-Blue/Near-UV Multiresonant Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence OLEDs

Two multiresonant thermally activated delayed fluorescence (MR-TADF) emitters are presented and it is shown how further borylation of a deep-blue MR-TADF emitter, DIDOBNA-N, both blueshifts and narrows the emission producing a new near-UV MR-TADF emitter, MesB-DIDOBNA-N, are shown. DIDOBNA-N emits bright blue light (& phi;(PL) = 444 nm, FWHM = 64 nm, & phi;(PL) = 81%, & tau;(d) = 23 ms, 1.5 wt% in TSPO1). The deep-blue organic light-emitting diode (OLED) based on this twisted MR-TADF compound shows a very high maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE(max)) of 15.3% for a device with CIEy of 0.073. The fused planar MR-TADF emitter, MesB-DIDOBNA-N shows efficient and narrowband near-UV emission (& lambda;(PL) = 402 nm, FWHM = 19 nm, & phi;(PL) = 74.7%, & tau;(d) = 133 ms, 1.5 wt% in TSPO1). The best OLED with MesB-DIDOBNA-N, doped in a co-host, shows the highest efficiency reported for a near-UV OLED at 16.2%. With a CIEy coordinate of 0.049, this device also shows the bluest EL reported for a MR-TADF OLED to date.

Automated summary

Two multiresonant thermally activated delayed fluorescence (MR-TADF) emitters are demonstrated. The borylation of a deep-blue MR-TADF emitter, DIDOBNA-N, results in a new near-UV MR-TADF emitter, MesB-DIDOBNA-N, with a blueshifted and narrowed emission. DIDOBNA-N emits bright blue light with high efficiency, while the OLED based on MesB-DIDOBNA-N shows the highest efficiency and the bluest emission among MR-TADF OLEDs reported to date.