Highly Solvent Resistant Small-Molecule Hole-Transporting Materials for Efficient Perovskite Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Diodes

Perovskite quantum dot light-emitting diodes (Pe-QLEDs) have been shown as promising candidates for next-generation displays and lightings due to their unique feature of wide color gamut and high color saturation. Hole-transporting materials (HTMs) play crucial roles in the device performance and stability of Pe-QLEDs. However, small-molecule HTMs have been less studied in Pe-QLEDs due to their poor solvent resistance and low hole mobility. In this work, three novel small-molecule HTMs employing benzimidazole as the center core, named X4, X5, and X6, were designed and synthesized for application in Pe-QLEDs. One of the tailored HTM-X6 exhibits excellent solvent resistant ability to the perovskite quantum dot (QD) inks due to its proper solubility and low surface energy. Our result clearly demonstrated that the synergistic effect of poor solubility and low surface energy facilitates the achievement of good solvent resistance to perovskite QD inks. As a result, a promising maximal external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 14.1% is achieved in X6-based CsPbBr3 Pe-QLEDs, which is much higher than that of X4 (9.16%) and X5 (6.60%)-based devices, which is comparable to the PTAA reference (EQE similar to 15.8%) under the same conditions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example that a benzimidazole-based small-molecule HTM demonstrated a good application in Pe-QLEDs. Our work provides new guidance for the rational design of small-molecule HTMs with high solvent resistance for efficient Pe-QLEDs and other photoelectronic devices.

Automated summary

This study designed and synthesized three novel small-molecule hole-transporting materials, and found that HTM-X6 exhibited excellent solvent resistance, leading to an improved external quantum efficiency in Pe-QLEDs.