Excited‐State Engineering Enables Efficient Deep‐Blue Light‐Emitting Diodes Exhibiting BT.2020 Color Gamut
Rui‐Zhi An, Yuqi Sun, Hao‐Yang Chen, Yuan Liu, Alberto Privitera, William K. Myers, Tanya K. Ronson, Alexander J. Gillett, Neil C. Greenham, Lin‐Song Cui
Abstract
Organic luminescent materials that exhibit thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) can convert non-emissive triplet excitons into emissive singlet states through a reverse intersystem crossing (RISC) process. Therefore, they have tremendous potential for applications in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). However, with the development of ultra-high definition 4K/8K display technologies, designing efficient deep-blue TADF materials to achieve the Commission Internationale de l'Éclairage (CIE) coordinates fulfilling BT.2020 remains a significant challenge. Here, an effective approach is proposed to design deep-blue TADF molecules based on hybrid long- and short-range charge-transfer by incorporation of multiple donor moieties into organoboron multiple resonance acceptors. The resulting TADF molecule exhibits deep-blue emission at 414 nm with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 29 nm, together with a thousand-fold increase in RISC rate. OLEDs based on the champion material achieve a record maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 22.8% with CIE coordinates of (0.163, 0.046), approaching the coordinates of the BT.2020 blue standard. Moreover, TADF-assisted fluorescence devices employing the designed material as a sensitizer exhibit an exceptional EQE of 33.1%. This work thus provides a blueprint for future development of efficient deep-blue TADF emitters, representing an important milestone towards meeting the blue color gamut standard of BT.2020.