High-Efficiency Deep Red Fluorescent Material with Aggregation Induced Emission and the Application in Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

Abstract

The development of highly efficient deep red materials with emission wavelength beyond 650 nm remains a big challenge due to the constraints imposed by the energy gap rule. In this work, a donor-acceptor-donor type emitter, 4,7-bis (10-(4-(tert-butyl) phenyl)-10H-phenothiazin-3-yl) benzo[c][1,2,5] thiadiazole (TBPPTZ) is designed and synthesized. Resulting from the slight twist angle between the donor and acceptor units, TBPPTZ exhibits nearly planar conformation and an extended conjugated structure. TBPPTZ shows a deep red emission peak at 687 nm and aggregation induced emission property with a high photoluminescence quantum yield of 45 % in neat thin film. The optimized organic light-emitting diode (OLEDs) utilizing TBPPTZ as the non-doped emissive layer obtains a high external quantum efficiency (EQE) up to 2.51 % with an electroluminescence (EL) peak at 676 nm, aligning with the Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage (CIE) coordinates (0.68, 0.31), which shows a small EQE roll-off of only 5.6 % at 100 cd m⁻². Additionally, the doped OLED achieves an EQE up to 5.09 %, with an EL peak at 656 nm and CIE coordinates of (0.65, 0.34). The findings of this research not only contribute to achieve highly efficient deep red OLEDs but also offer a novel and effective deep red molecular strategy to realize high-quality OLEDs.