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Non-Doped Deep Blue and Doped White Electroluminescence Devices Based on Phenanthroimidazole Derivative

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Abstract

A novel deep-blue emitter PhImPOTD based on phenathroimidazole was synthesized, which is incorporated by an electron-donating dibenzothiophene unit and electron-withdrawing phenanthroimidazole and diphenylphosphine oxide moieties. Furthermore, the weak π–π stacking and intermolecular aggregation render the photoluminescence quantum yield is as high as 0.34 in the solid state. Non-doped organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) based on PhImPOTD emitter exhibits a low turn-on voltage of 3.6 V, a favorable efficiency of 1.13 cd A−1 and a deep blue emission with Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.15, 0.08). The CIE is very close to the NTSC (National Television Standards Committe) blue standard (CIE: 0.14, 0.08). PhImPOTD is also utilized as blue emitter and the host for a yellow emitter (PO-01) to fabricate white organic light-emitting diodes (WOLEDs). This gives a forward-viewing maximum CE of 4.83 cd A−1 and CIE coordinates of (0.32, 0.32) at the luminance of 1000 cd m−2. Moreover, the single-carrier devices unambiguously demonstrate that typical bipolar-dominant characteristics of PhImPOTD. This work demonstrates not only that the phenanthroimidazole unit is an excellent building block to construct deep blue emission materials, but also the introduction of a diphenylphosphine oxide deprotonation substituent is an efficient tactic for harvesting deep-blue emitting devices.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the support by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 111572002) and the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11521202).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex System, College of Engineering, Peking University, Chengfu Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100871, People’s Republic of China

    Shuo Chen & Daining Fang

  2. State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronics Science and Engineering, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun, 130012, People’s Republic of China

    Yukun Wu, Shoucheng Hu & Yi Zhao

  3. Institute of Advanced Structure Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, South Street No. 5, Zhongguancun, Haidian District, Beijing, 100081, People’s Republic of China

    Daining Fang

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  1. Shuo Chen
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Correspondence to Daining Fang.

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Shuo Chen and Yukun Wu These authors contributed equally.

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Chen, S., Wu, Y., Hu, S. et al. Non-Doped Deep Blue and Doped White Electroluminescence Devices Based on Phenanthroimidazole Derivative. J Fluoresc 27, 451–461 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10895-016-1970-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10895-016-1970-5

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