Highly efficient thermally activated delayed fluorescence emitter developed by replacing carbazole with 1,3,6,8-tetramethyl-carbazole

Abstract

Carbazole (Cz) is the one of the most popular electron donors to develop thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters, but additional groups are generally required in the molecules to enhance the steric hindrance between Cz and electron acceptor segments. To address this issue, we replaced Cz with its derivative 1,3,6,8-tetramethyl-carbazole (tMCz) to develop TADF emitters. Two novel compounds, 6-(4-(carbazol-9-yl)phenyl)-2,4-diphenylnicotinonitrile (CzPN) and 2,4-diphenyl-6-(4- (1,3,6,8-tetramethyl-carbazol-9-yl)phenyl) nicotinonitrile (tMCzPN) were designed and synthesized accordingly. With the same and simple molecular framework, tMCzPN successfully exhibits TADF behavior, while CzPN is a non-TADF fluorophor, as the additional steric hindrance of methyl groups leads to a more twisted structure of tMCzPN. In the organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), tMCzPN exhibits extremely high forward-viewing maximum external quantum efficiency of 26.0%, without any light out-coupling enhancement, which is significantly higher than that of 5.3% for CzPN. These results indicate that tMCzPN is an excellent TADF emitter and proves that tMCz is a more appropriate candidate than Cz to develop TADF emitters.