Wang Z, Zhao J, Muddassir M, Guan R, Tao S. Recovering the Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence in Aggregation-Induced Emitters of Carborane.
Inorg Chem 2021;
60:4705-4716. [PMID:
33739084 DOI:
10.1021/acs.inorgchem.0c03664]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/30/2022]
Abstract
The aggregation-induced emission (AIE) behaviors of carborane-based hybrid emitters have been extensively reported, while their combinations with the thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) are still scarce. We designed and synthesized three Janus carboranes (the chemical structures resemble the double-faced god, Janus) Cb-1/2/3 with different carbazole moieties. All of the Janus carboranes exhibited quenched emission in solution with ΦPL (quantum efficiency of photoluminescence (PL)) lower than 0.01. The PL performance was improved by proceeding to the aggregates in THF/water (ΦPL 0.17-0.35) and further improved in the crystals or solid with ΦPL up to 0.99 for Cb-1, 0.85 for Cb-2, and 0.61 for Cb-3, which agreed with the AIE enhancement. Although the PL of solid Cb-1/2/3 showed non-TADF properties with lifetimes only at several nanoseconds, the crystallographic studies have shown a root cause of π···π stacking that quenched the TADF, and the theoretical calculations forecasted small singlet-triplet energy gaps (ΔES-T) therein. According to these findings, TADF was recovered in Cb-1/2/3 by doping into 1,3-bis(carbazol-9-yl)benzene (mCP). The 10 wt % doped films of Cb-1/2/3 have achieved a trade-off of ΦPL (0.84 in Cb-3 and 0.83 in Cb-1) and delayed lifetime (up to 8 μs). The doped devices of organic light-emitting diodes incorporating Cb-1/2/3 achieved the highest external quantum efficiency at 10.1% and the maximized luminance of 5920 cd/m2 at a driving voltage of 8 V.
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