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In purely organic room‐temperature phosphorescence (RTP) materials, fluorescence radiative transitions generally compete against inter‐system crossing (ISC) transitions to give fluorescence/phosphorescence dual emission. In order to achieve pure phosphorescence in RTP organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs), extended π‐conjugation is introduced into Se‐containing donors to suppress the fluorescence radiative transitions by the symmetry excited state orbitals in the introduced π–π* transitions that cancel the overlap of the orbitals, and two novel nonaromatic amine donor containing orange RTP emitters namely 2‐(benzo[c]phenoxaselenin‐10‐yl)‐4,6‐diphenyl‐1,3,5‐triazine (BPXSeDRZ) and 2‐(dibenzo[a,c]phenoxaselenin‐11‐yl)‐4,6‐diphenyl‐1,3,5‐triazine (DBPXSeDRZ) are developed, both of which exhibit efficient orange pure phosphorescence in doped films thanks to the sufficient ISC transitions. As a result, high external quantum efficiencies of 17.2% and 17.9% are respectively achieved for the orange RTP‐OLEDs based on BPXSeDRZ and DBPXSeDRZ for the first time, and they also exhibit stable pure electro‐phosphorescence spectra in a wide driving voltage. Moreover, by adopting DBPXSeDRZ as a sensitizer to harvest the triplet excitons and tetraphenyldibenzoperiflanthene as a conventional fluorescent emitter, the external quantum efficiency of the sensitized red fluorescent OLED can be elevated to 10.1%, which greatly expands the potential applications of the metal‐free phosphors in OLEDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) compounds are prospective materials for highly efficient narrowband organic light‐emitting diodes. Specifically, boron‐nitrogen doped PAHs exhibit multiple resonance (MR) effect toward thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) and narrow full width at half‐maximum (FWHM). Currently, the molecular design strategy for bathochromic‐shifted narrowband MR‐TADF emitters is a hotspot and challenging puzzle. Herein, a carbonyl is fused in the boron‐nitrogen doped PAH for constructing a boron/nitrogen/carbonyl MR‐TADF emitter. Benefiting from the carbonyl, the developed emitter exhibits enhanced intramolecular charge transfer and decreased reorganization energy, which displays bathochromic‐shifted narrowband emission pertinently. As a consequence, the proof‐of‐concept compound TCZBAO achieves an emission peak at 522 nm and narrow FWHM of 39 nm, while the carbonyl‐free TCZBAC exhibits an emission peak at 502 nm and FWHM of 46 nm. Maximum external quantum efficiencies of 36.1 % and 32.4 % are realized for the devices based on TCZBAO and TCZBAC, respectively, indicating the guiding significance of the proposed design strategy for developing bathochromic‐shifted narrowband MR‐TADF emitters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi‐resonance (MR) based organoboron emitters exhibiting high‐efficiency narrowband thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) have become a critical material component for constructing high‐performance organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) with high color purity and high color gamut. However, most of the MR‐TADF devices suffer from severe efficiency roll‐off at high current density due to the relatively large singlet–triplet splitting energy, long excited state lifetime, and slow reverse intersystem crossing rate (kRISC). Herein, by utilizing a sulfur atom‐fused donor unit, 7H‐benzo[4,5]thieno[2,3‐b]carbazole, an organic boron emitter (BTC‐BNCz) capable of high efficiency and low efficiency roll‐off narrowband TADF emission is developed. Benefitting from the heavy atom effect of the sulfur atom, kRISC up to 1.6 × 105 s−1 is achieved, which could greatly reduce the undesired quenching effect. Consequently, the OLED using BTC‐BNCz as dopant exhibits high external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 27.0% with full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 35 nm. Moreover, by utilizing a TADF material with a high horizontal dipole ratio as assistant host, outstanding device performance is achieved with a maximum EQE of 35.2% and FWHM of 37 nm, featuring slow efficiency roll‐off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doping‐free organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) are beneficial to reduce manufacturing costs for mass production, which, however, are limited by the ubiquitous aggregation‐caused quenching (ACQ) effect, especially for thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters with relatively long exciton lifetimes. Herein, two typical TADF emitters pACRS and pACRSO with different sulfur atom valence states are developed, where pACRS with a thioether unit exhibits suppressed intermolecular interaction, alleviated ACQ effect, and higher efficiency in a conventional doping‐free device, in contract to pACRSO with a sulfone unit. It is of interest that comparable efficiencies are achieved for both emitters in doping‐free OLEDs with an ultrathin emission layer (UEML), in which the emitter molecules are deposited onto the surface of the underlying organic layer of host material to form an ultrathin quasi‐host‐guest system with alleviated ACQ effect. Besides, the suppressed trap effect is the key to guarantee the efficiency of UEML‐OLEDs, while different intermolecular interactions of emitters that determine the optimized UEML thickness will affect the efficiency roll‐off. Furthermore, benefiting from the UEML structure, highly efficient doping‐free OLEDs are also successfully achieved for red TADF emitters with stronger intermolecular interactions. Such an UEML strategy meeting efficiency and cost demands holds great promise for doping‐free OLEDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polychlorinated (hetero)arenes have shown great promise for organic optoelectronics applications. However, the harsh synthetic routes for polychlorinated compounds and the possible luminescence quenching from the compact intermolecular π–π stacking induced by chlorine atoms limit their investigations and applications in luminescent materials. Herein, two isomeric polychlorinated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) compounds JY‐1‐Cl and JY‐2‐Cl consisting of rigidified aryl ketones and amine are designed and synthesized under mild conditions through nucleophilic chlorination intermediated by an electron donor‐acceptor complex. Among them, as a result of the strong π–π interactions induced by chlorine atoms, JY‐2‐Cl exhibits bright monomer and dimer emissions with dual thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) characters. Notably, compared with the non‐chlorinated compounds, a high photoluminescence quantum yield is maintained after introducing multiple chlorine atoms into JY‐2‐Cl. The first dual‐TADF organic light‐emitting diodes are also successfully fabricated with maximum external quantum efficiency as high as 29.1 % by employing JY‐2‐Cl as emitter. This work presents a new paradigm and synthesis of polychlorinated amine‐carbonyl PAHs and demonstrates the great potential of the chlorinated materials for luminescent applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High‐quality hosts are indispensable for simultaneously realizing stable, high efficiency, and low roll‐off blue solution‐processed organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs). Herein, three solution processable bipolar hosts with successively reduced triplet energies approaching the T1 state of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitter are developed and evaluated for high‐performance blue OLED devices. The smaller T1 energy gap between host and guest allows the quenching of long‐lived triplet excitons to reduce exciton concentration inside the device, and thus suppresses singlet‐triplet and triplet‐triplet annihilations. Triplet‐energy‐mediated hosts with high enough T1 and better charge balance in device facilitate high exciton utilization efficiency and uniform triplet exciton distribution among host and TADF guest. Benefited from these synergetic factors, a high maximum external quantum efficiency (EQEmax) of 20.8%, long operational lifetime (T50 of 398.3 h @ 500 cd m−2), and negligible efficiency roll‐off (EQE of 20.1% @ 1000 cd m−2) are achieved for bluish‐green TADF OLEDs. Additionally introducing a narrowband emission multiple‐resonance TADF material as terminal emitter to accelerate exciton dynamic and improve exciton utilization, a higher EQEmax of 23.1%, suppressed roll‐off and extended lifetime of 456.3 h are achieved for the sky‐blue sensitized OLEDs at the same brightness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purely organic room‐temperature phosphorescence (RTP) materials generally exhibit low phosphorescence quantum yield (ϕP) and long phosphorescence lifetime (τP) due to the theoretically spin‐forbidden triplet state. Herein, by introducing a donor–acceptor (D–A) skeleton with a phenoxaselenine donor, three nonaromatic amine donor containing compounds with high ϕP and short τP in amorphous films are developed. Besides the enhanced spin–orbit coupling (SOC) by the heavy‐atom effect of selenium, the D–A skeleton which facilitates orbital angular momentum change can further boost SOC, and severe nonradiative energy dissipation is also suppressed by the rigid molecular structure. Consequently, a record‐high external quantum efficiency of 19.5% are achieved for the RTP organic light‐emitting diode (OLED) based on 2‐(phenoxaselenin‐3‐yl)‐4,6‐diphenyl‐1,3,5‐triazine (PXSeDRZ). Moreover, voltage‐dependent color‐tunable emission and single‐molecule white emission are also realized. These results shed light on the broad prospects of purely organic phosphorescence materials as highly efficient OLED emitters especially for potential charming lighting applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chirality is a magical property that exists in nature universally, ranging from the spin of microscopic electrons to the galaxies. Furthermore, circularly polarized organic electroluminescent materials have promising prospects in improving the brightness of displays, but there are still some problems. At present, most of chiral thermally activated delayed fluorescence small molecules show relatively low circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) dissymmetry factors between 10−4 and 10−3 because of the electric dipole‐allowed but magnetic dipole‐forbidden transition of the singlet state. In this work, a promising strategy is reported for constructing chiral exciplex systems with a chiral electron acceptor and a regular achiral donor to achieve high CPL dissymmetry factors in both photoluminescence and electroluminescence. From theoretical calculation results, the exciplex systems possess a large separation of the highest occupied molecular orbital and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital in donor and acceptor molecules, respectively, which results in comparable electric and magnetic transition dipole moments. The resultant CPL organic light‐emitting diodes based on the exciplex systems as emitters show low turn‐on voltage of 2.4 V, high external quantum efficiencies of 12.7% and 9.3%, and opposite circularly polarized electroluminescence with high dissymmetry factors (gEL) of +7.25 × 10−3 and −9.89 × 10−3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructing organic near‐infrared (NIR) luminescent materials to confront the formidable barrier of "energy gap law" remains challenging. Herein, two NIR thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) molecules named T‐β‐IQD and TIQD were developed by connecting N,N‐diphenylnaphthalen‐2‐amine and triphenylamine with a novel electron withdrawing unit 6‐(4‐(tert‐butyl)phenyl)‐6H‐indolo[2,3‐b]quinoxaline‐2,3‐dicarbonitrile. It is confirmed NIR‐TADF emitters concurrent with aggregation‐induced emission effect, J‐aggregate with intra‐ and intermolecular CN⋅⋅⋅H−C and C−H⋅⋅⋅π interactions, and large center‐to‐center distance in solid states can boost the emissive efficiencies both in thin films and non‐doped organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs). Consequently, the T‐β‐IQD‐based non‐doped NIR‐OLED achieved the maximum external quantum efficiency (EQEmax) of 9.44 % with emission peak at 711 nm, which is one of the highest efficiencies reported to date for non‐doped NIR‐OLEDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generally, the charge transfer character of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials results in a long excitonic lifetime and broad‐band emission. With the combination of unity exciton utilization of TADF material and high radiative rate and narrow‐band emission of conventional fluorescence (CF) dopant, hyperfluorescence organic light‐emitting diodes (HF‐OLEDs) attract extensive attention in industry and academia recently. Till now, Dexter energy transfer (DET) from the triplet state of TADF assistant host to the dark triplet state of CF guest is the top‐drawer energy loss issue root in HF‐OLEDs. Herein, the energy loss of DET is blocked through one‐step substitution of TADF assistant host by electronically inert phenyl‐fluorene terminal for the first time. The blocking effect on DET process in HF‐OLEDs is investigated by means of photophysical characterization, theoretical calculation, device fabrication, and Monte Carlo simulation. The maximum external quantum efficiency of 18.1% with Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage coordinates of (0.61, 0.38) is achieved, which is on par with the state‐of‐the‐art efficiency for red HF‐OLEDs. This work presents a feasible design strategy for TADF assistant host aimed at achieving highly efficient HF‐OLEDs with narrow‐band emission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly efficient organic thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) and room‐temperature phosphorescence (RTP) emitters for organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) generally consist of a twisted donor–acceptor skeleton with aromatic amine donors. Herein, through introducing sulfur atoms into isomeric pentaphene and pentacene frameworks, we demonstrate a set of polycyclic luminophores exhibiting efficient TADF and RTP characters. The incorporation of sulfur atoms confirms a folded molecular plane, while intensifies singlet–triplet spin‐orbit coupling. Further, the isomeric effect has a significant effect on the electronic structure of excited state, giving rise to the investigated compounds tunable luminescence mechanisms of TADF and RTP. With efficient triplet harvesting ability, maximum external quantum efficiencies up to 25.1 % and 8.7 % are achieved for the corresponding TADF and RTP OLEDs, verifying the great potential of sulfur‐bridged frameworks for highly efficient devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radiative exciton generation and light out‐coupling are two crucial factors for highly efficient organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs). Herein, a thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) material DspiroS‐TRZ with high horizontal dipole ratio (HDR, Θ// = 82%) is utilized as the blue emitter as well as the host for an orange‐red TADF emitter TPA‐AQ to fabricate white OLEDs. A synergetic horizontal dipole orientation induction on the transition dipole moment of TPA‐AQ is achieved by the highly orientated DspiroS‐TRZ, resulting in high HDR (Θ// = 96%) of the orange‐red emitter. Owing to the simultaneous efficient triplet exciton utilization and highly orientated binary system, a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQEmax) of 29.3% is achieved for single emission layer (EML) white OLED, with an excellent white light out‐coupling efficiency of 34%. In addition, the carrier recombination in the EML is further regulated by inserting an exciton regulation emission layer, which can relieve the trapping effect of the orange‐red emitter and guarantee stable Langevin recombination and energy transfer processes for improved electroluminescence spectral stability. An EQEmax of 31.2% is ultimately achieved for the double‐EML white OLED, highlighting the key role of horizontal dipole orientation induction and carrier recombination modulation for highly efficient and spectral stable white OLEDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thermally activated delayed fluorescent (TADF) materials generally suffer from severe concentration quenching. Efficient non‐doped TADF emitters are generally highly twisted aromatic amine‐based compounds with isolated chemical moieties. Herein we demonstrate that co‐facial packing and strong π–π intermolecular interactions give rise to bright TADF emissions in non‐doped film and crystalline states within the compound 2,4‐diphenyl‐6‐(thianthren‐1‐yl)‐1,3,5‐triazine (oTE‐DRZ). Quantum chemistry simulations indicate that a disperse outer orbital of sulfur atoms, a folded thianthrene plane (for a reduced donor–acceptor distance), and a triazine acceptor with n–π* character, generate a spatially conjugated transition with a small singlet–triplet splitting energy. In company with a highly emissive non‐doped film, the corresponding organic light‐emitting diode achieved a 20.6 % external quantum efficiency, verifying its potential for high‐performance optoelectronic applications. In a crystalline state, it was verified that intra‐ and intermolecular dual TADF assisted by a hidden room‐temperature phosphorescent state. This state could preserve the long‐lived excitons while suppressing non‐radiation, and it could serve as a "spring‐board" for cascade up‐conversion processes. The oTE‐DRZ crystal showed greenish‐blue emission with a very high photoluminescent quantum yield of approximately 87 %, which is the highest among all TADF crystals reported to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Hosts with TADF, conventional fluorescence and RTP characters are developed. • Exciton utilization efficiency is improved by the host with TADF character. • An EQE of 36.1% was achieved for sky blue OLED with DspiroAc-TRZ as emitter. • An EQE of 34.0% was achieved for the sensitized device with v -DABNA dopant. Spiral donor units have attracted extensive research focuses in designing highly emissive thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters. Herein, to reveal the significance of spiral donor units for constructing highly efficient host materials, several spiral donor-based host materials are developed. With the incorporation of spiral donor, increased intermolecular distance is achieved to reduce the concentration quenching effect of dopant. Moreover, the high triplet energy level of spiral donor can provide an additional energy transfer channel to further improve the device performance. Noteworthy, by connecting spiral donors or conventional carbazole unit with different electron-withdrawing units phenoxathiine 10,10-dioxide (PX) or phenoxathiine (PA), these hosts are given different photophysical properties of TADF, room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) and conventional fluorescence (CF). The strong electron-withdrawing ability of PX is beneficial to the TADF character of spiral donor-based molecules, while the weak electron-withdrawing ability of PA is beneficial to the RTP property. Consequently, the blue OLEDs with DspiroAc-TRZ as a dopant emitter based on the hosts with TADF characters exhibit higher performance than those with RTP and CF properties, and excellent external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 36.1 % and current efficiency of 84.6 cd/A are achieved in a simple device structure. Furthermore, peak EQEs of 34.0 % and 33.0 % are achieved, when DspiroS-PX and DspiroS-PA hosted DspiroAc-TRZ are used to sensitize blue multi-resonance TADF emitter v -DABNA. Our work may shed new light on designing highly efficient host materials for TADF emitters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Luminous mechanism switch between TADF and CF was realized by isomer engineering. • Different exciton dynamic processes depend on the interplay of 1CT, 3LE and 3CT and molecular geometry rigidity. • Red TADF OLEDs with external quantum efficiency >20% was achieved. Marching toward highly efficient long-wavelength organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) is paramount but formidable challenge, and rational manipulation of molecular configuration and excited state dynamic processes are of great importance to harvest dark triplet exciton and suppress non-radiative transition for excellent light emission properties. Herein, we introduced a novel electron acceptor 11H-indeno [1,2-b] quinoxalin-11-one (IQ) as a building-block to construct two bright red light-emitting regioisomers of IQ-oTPA and IQ-pTPA, which exhibit entirely different exciton dynamic processes of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) and conventional fluorescence (CF) respectively. According to theoretical calculation and photophysical characterization, the energy gap, energy level alignment and spin–orbit coupling (SOC) effects of charge-transfer singlet state (1CT), local excited triplet state (3LE) and charge-transfer triplet state (3CT) together with the molecular geometry rigidity play a critical role in the triplet exciton up-conversion processes. Maximum external quantum efficiencies of 20.6% and 3.5% with emission peaks of 604 and 642 nm were achieved for the proof-of-concept electroluminescent devices based on IQ-oTPA and IQ-pTPA respectively, which are among the state-of-the-art performance for red-emission TADF and CF OLEDs and provide new insights for the molecular design tactic of high-performance red OLEDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel nonaromatic amine containing hole‐transporting material, 3,3′‐(2‐methyl‐1,3‐phenylene)diphenoxathiine (mPXTMP), is developed and coevaporated with electron‐transporting materials to form comixed films. Pure‐blue, sky‐blue, and green thermally activated delayed fluorescent (TADF) exciplex emissions are observed. Though the mPXTMP:2,4,6‐tri([1,1′‐biphenyl]‐3‐yl)‐1,3,5‐triazine (T2T) bimolecular system exhibits a large singlet–triplet splitting energy (ΔEST) of 0.44 eV, its locally triplet excited states play vital roles in the cascade up‐conversion process, leading to an abnormal synergistic enhancement of TADF and phosphorescence from high‐lying triplet states at a low temperature, which violates Kasha's rule. Another bimolecular system, mPXTMP:PO‐T2T, achieves a fast up‐conversion rate of 106 s−1 benefiting from a small ΔEST of 0.10 eV and the enhanced spin–orbital coupling induced by the sulfur element rich environment. The corresponding organic light‐emitting diodes realize an exciton utilization ratio of 61.7–92.6%, verifying that these nonaromatic amine containing exciplex systems can be promising candidates toward purely organic electroluminescence with 100% internal quantum efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chirality is a magical property that exists in nature universally, ranging from the spin of microscopic electrons to the galaxies. Furthermore, circularly polarized organic electroluminescent materials have promising prospects in improving the brightness of displays, but there are still some problems. At present, most of chiral thermally activated delayed fluorescence small molecules show relatively low circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) dissymmetry factors between 10−4 and 10−3 because of the electric dipole‐allowed but magnetic dipole‐forbidden transition of the singlet state. In this work, a promising strategy is reported for constructing chiral exciplex systems with a chiral electron acceptor and a regular achiral donor to achieve high CPL dissymmetry factors in both photoluminescence and electroluminescence. From theoretical calculation results, the exciplex systems possess a large separation of the highest occupied molecular orbital and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital in donor and acceptor molecules, respectively, which results in comparable electric and magnetic transition dipole moments. The resultant CPL organic light‐emitting diodes based on the exciplex systems as emitters show low turn‐on voltage of 2.4 V, high external quantum efficiencies of 12.7% and 9.3%, and opposite circularly polarized electroluminescence with high dissymmetry factors (gEL) of +7.25 × 10−3 and −9.89 × 10−3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an immense challenge to develop efficient long-wavelength (orange-to-red) thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials due to the increasing nonradiative decay rates following the energy-gap law. Herein, two pairs of asymmetric isomers; DPyPzTPA and TPAPzDPy, and PyPzDTPA and DTPAPzPy based on electron-deficient moieties dibenzo[ a,c ]phenazine (Pz) and pyridine (Py) combined with electron-donor units of triphenylamine (TPA) were designed and synthesized. Their photophysical properties could be finely modulated by changing the position and number of Py groups as well as TPA fragments onto Pz cores. DPyPzTPA and DTPAPzPy possess much more rigidity and thus less geometry relaxation and non-radiative decay between ground states and excited states than those of PyPzDTPA and TPAPzDPy. Intriguingly, DPyPzTPA exhibits the highest relative photoluminescence quantum yield (Φ PL) and the fastest reverse intersystem crossing (rISC) rate among them owing to relatively stronger rigidity and spin-orbit coupling (SOC) interactions between the lowest singlet (S 1) and energetically close-lying excited triplet state and therefore, the device showed the highest maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE max) of 16.6% (60.9 lm/W, 53.3 cd/A) with Commission Internationale de I'Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.43, 0.55), peak wavelength 556 nm. In stark contrast, due to its lower rigidity and extremely weak delayed fluorescence (DF) characteristic and thus the much lower Φ PL , TPAPzDPy-based devices are only half as efficient (30.8 lm/W, 27.5 cd/A, 8.3% EQE) despite the isomers possessing equal singlet-triplet energy gaps (Δ E ST) of 0.43 eV. On the other hand, the device based on DTPAPzPy also demonstrated a strongly enhanced performance (59.1 lm/W, 52.7 cd/A, 16.1% EQE) than its isomer PyPzDTPA-based device (39.5 lm/W, 35.2 cd/A, 10.3% EQE). This work explicitly implicates that the asymmetric and isomeric molecular design is a potential strategy for promoting the development of highly efficient long-wavelength TADF materials. • Four emitters based on pyridine-decorated dibenzo[ a,c ]phenazine were developed. • Their photophysical properties could be finely modulated. • DPyPzTPA exhibits the largest Φ PL of 59.1% and k rISC of 1.48 × 103 S−1. • DPyPzTPA's device showed the highest efficiency of 60.9 lm/W, 53.3 cd/A and 16.6%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Coexistence of intra-CT and inter-CT processes is realized for DPA-XA-TRZ. • Dual CT processes can be simultaneously enhanced by planar molecular skeleton. • Organic light-emitting diodes with external quantum efficiency of 21.9% is realized. • Efficiency of 31.7% is realized by DPA-XA-TRZ sensitized device with DMAc-BN dopant. Intramolecular charge transfer (intra-CT) and intermolecular charge transfer (inter-CT) are two general molecular design strategies of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Herein, a diphenylamine (DPA) donor and a 2,4-diphenyl-1,3,5-triazine (TRZ) acceptor are connected by two planar units, non-conjugated 9,9-dimethyl-9 H -xanthene (XA) and conjugated dibenzo[ b,d ]furan (FR), to give D-σ-A type emitter DPA-XA-TRZ and D-π-A type emitter DPA-FR-TRZ. Coexistence of intra- and inter-CT is found for DPA-XA-TRZ and is readily tuned by various doping concentrations owing to the non-conjugated linkage. In contrast, DPA-FR-TRZ shows a dominant intra-CT characteristic due to the strong molecular conjugation. The planar molecular skeleton of DPA-XA-TRZ could not only enhance intramolecular electronic coupling, but also reduce steric hindrance and shorten intermolecular distance to enhance inter-CT process. A maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE max) of 21.9 % is achieved for the OLED device based on DPA-XA-TRZ, which is 2.5 times higher than that of DPA-FR-TRZ (8.4 %). DPA-XA-TRZ can also be utilized as an assistant host to sensitize multiple resonance TADF emitter DMAc-BN, and an EQE max of 31.7 % is realized owing to its dual CT processes and high reverse intersystem crossing rate (k RISC), which is significantly superior to the conventional mCBP host and mCBP:PO-T2T exciplex cohost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Multiple CT channels and 3LE states contribute to the speedy k r and RISC processes. • High Θ and small FWHM are realized due to the rigid disk-like structure. • η r and η out above 30% are achieved owing to triplet exciton utilization and high Θ. • EQE above 10% was realized for the standard blue device based on BO3N. The efficiency of pure blue Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) still needs to be improved, which is limited by the utilization of the forbidden transition triplet excitons and low light-out-coupling efficiency in devices. Herein, two blue emitters were developed through combining multiple diphenylamine (DPA) donors with an oxygen-bridged boron (DBA) or triphenyl triazine (TRZ) acceptor. Notably, a narrow-band deep blue emission with a peak of 423 nm and a Full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 34 nm is realized for the boron-based emitter in toluene solution. Thanks to their multiple Charge transfer (CT) channels and high orientated disk-like structure, high radiative transition rates (k r > 108 s−1) and high horizontal emitting dipole ratios (Θ > 80%) can be realized simultaneously. Meanwhile, the introduction of the peripheral DPA units can also provide multiple localized triplet (3LE) states for spin up-conversion of forbidden transition triplet excitons. Owing to the effective up-conversion of triplet excitons and high light-out-coupling efficiency, maximum external quantum efficiency of more than 10% is achieved for the boron emitter-based pure blue OLEDs with a Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.14, 0.08). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) employing purely organic functional materials indicate a low-cost manufacturing route towards the next-generation display and solid-state lighting owing to the avoidance of noble heavy metal complex phosphorescent emitters. In recent years, several mechanisms have been proposed to design high performance purely organic emitters. This new generation of purely organic emitters shed light on the realization of both low-cost and high performances. The main idea of this paper is to review how to use purely organic semiconductors to realize high-efficiency OLEDs. This guides us to pay special attention to two aspects: 1) how to break the efficiency bottleneck resulting from exciton spin-statistics, which is critical to determine internal quantum efficiency; 2) how to enhance out-coupling efficiency by molecular designs, which eventually influences on external quantum efficiency. Several significant material design strategies are thus introduced, and the relevant mechanisms are classified as triplet-triplet annihilation, thermally activated delayed fluorescence, hot excitons, room temperature phosphorescence, and luminescent radicals. Then, device strategies by employing organic heterojunctions as the main luminescent center towards high-performance fluorescent OLEDs were introduced. Finally, we outline the progress of enhancing out-coupling efficiency by tuning the dipole orientation of emitters and the operational stability of OLEDs excluding noble heavy metal complex phosphorescent emitters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]