Performance enhancement in thermally activated delayed fluorescence emitters by multi-fold layout

A series of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials, namely o-Ac2BBP, o-Px2BBP, D-BP-DMAC and D-BP-PXZ, were designed with double acridine (DMAC) or phenoxazine (PXZ) donors and double carbonyl acceptors. Phenylene and biphenylene were selected as the central bridges for these emitters, and each benzene ring on the central bridge was substituted at ortho-sites. The biphenylene bridge based D-BP-DMAC and D-BP-PXZ show 3D dimensional non-planar conformations and multi-fold layout, which result in multiple intramolecular interactions including C–H⋯O hydrogen bonds and C–H···π interactions and finally strongly stabilized and rigidified the whole molecular structures by locking the molecular geometry. As a result, the nonradiative transition rates (knr) were effectively suppressed by 5 times in comparison with the corresponding phenylene bridged analogues, and the photoluminescence quantum yields were increased to over 95%. The green and yellow OLEDs with D-BP-DMAC and D-BP-PXZ as doped emitters exhibited the maximum external quantum efficiencies (EQE) of 24.3% and 17.3%, which are almost double of the corresponding values (13.1% and 9.3%) of the phenylene bridged analogues o-Ac2BBP and o-Px2BBP. These results indicate that to increase molecular rigidity by multi-fold-layout is an effective design strategy to enhance the performance of TADF materials and OLEDs.