Synthesis And Electroluminescent Performance Of Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence-Conjugated Polymers With Simple Formylphenyl As Pendant Acceptor

Formylphenyl has been demonstrated to act as an acceptor to construct thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitter, and therefore a series of the TADF-conjugated polymers with formylphenyl as pendant acceptor and carbazole/acridine as backbone donor are designed and synthesized. All polymers involve the twisted donor/acceptor structural moieties with the sufficiently spatial separation between the highest occupied molecular orbital and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital as well as a small singlet/triplet splitting, and exhibit the legible TADF features confirmed by theoretical calculation and their transient decay spectra. The solution processed organic light-emitting diodes using neat film of the polymers as emissive layer achieve excellent performance with the maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of up to 10.6%, the maximum current efficiency of up to 35.3 cd A(-1) and the low turn-on voltage of 2.7V. Moreover, the EQE still remains 10.3% at the luminance of 1000 cd m(-2) with the low driving voltage of 4.4V and extremely small efficiency roll-off. (C) 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.