Abstract
A series of X-shaped thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters are systematically studied by first-principles calculations. Effects of the cyano group adding to the acceptor unit and the hydroxyl group adding to the donor part on the optical and electrical properties are analyzed. It is found that both kinds of groups can efficiently increase the emission wavelength to realize full-color emission. Although they play different roles in modulating the energy level of frontier orbitals, the S-T energy gap, the reorganization energy and transfer integral for different molecules, they can efficiently increase the charge transfer rate and reduce the difference of electron transfer rate and hole transfer rate. These results indicate that these designed strategies are efficient to achieve balanced charge transfer rates and modulate emission colors. By analyzing the energy matching between the TADF emitters and three kinds of hosts, the emission spectra of the 3,5-bis(N-carbazolyl)benzene (mcp) and the absorption spectra of most TADF emitters have a large overlap, which provides helpful information in application of these TADF molecules.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Baldo MA, O’Brien DF, You Y, Shoustikov A, Sibley S, Thompson ME, Forrest SR (1998) Highly efficient phosphorescent emission from organic electroluminescent devices. Nature 395:151–154
Adachi C, Baldo MA, Thompson ME, Forrest SR (2001) Nearly 100% internal phosphorescence efficiency in an organic light-emitting device. J Appl Phys 90:5048–5051
Li G, Fleetham T, Li J (2014) Efficient and stable white organic light-emitting diodes employing a single emitter. Adv Mater 26:2931–2936
Zhao B, Zhang T, Chu B, Li W, Su Z, Luo Y, Li R, Yan X, Jin F, Gao Y, Wu H (2015) Highly efficient tandem full exciplex orange and warm white OLEDs based on thermally activated delayed fluorescence mechanism. Org Electron 17:15–21
Gaj MP, Fuentes-Hernandez C, Zhang Y, Marder SR, Kippelen B (2015) Highly efficient Organic Light-Emitting Diodes from thermally activated delayed fluorescence using a sulfone–carbazole host material. Org Electron 16:109–112
Zhang QS, Li J, Shizu K, Huang SP, Hirata S, Miyazaki H, Adachi C (2012) Design of efficient thermally activated delayed fluorescence materials for pure blue organic light emitting diodes. J Am Chem Soc 134:14706–14709
Zhu M, Yang C (2013) Blue fluorescent emitters: design tactics and applications in organic light-emitting diodes. Chem Soc Rev 42:4963–4976
Perry JW, Mansour K, Marder SR, Perry KJ (1994) Enhanced reverse saturable absorption and optical limiting in heavy-atom- substituted phthalocyanines. Opt Lett 19:625–627
Rhee SH, Kim SH, Kim HS, Shin JY, Bastola J, Ryu SY (2015) Heavily doped, charge-balanced fluorescent organic light-emitting diodes from direct charge trapping of dopants in emission layer. ACS Appl Mater Interfaces 7:16750–16759
Uoyama H, Goushi K, Shizu K, Nomura H, Adachi C (2012) Highly efficient organic light-emitting diodes from delayed fluorescence. Nature 492:234–238
Zhang T, Chu B, Li W, Su Z, Peng QM, Zhao B, Luo Y, Jin F, Yan X, Gao Y, Wu H, Zhang F, Fan D, Wang J (2014) Efficient triplet application in exciplex delayed-fluorescence OLEDs using a reverse intersystem crossing mechanism based on a DeltaES-T of around zero. ACS Appl Mater Interfaces 6:11907–11914
Peng Q, Li W, Zhang S, Chen P, Li F, Ma Y (2013) Evidence of the reverse intersystem crossing in intra-molecular charge-transfer fluorescence-based organic light-emitting devices through magneto-electroluminescence measurements. Adv Opt Mater 1:362–366
Furukawa T, Nakanotani H, Inoue M, Adachi C (2015) Dual enhancement of electroluminescence efficiency and operational stability by rapid upconversion of triplet excitons in OLEDs. Sci Rep 5:8429
Tao Y, Yuan K, Chen T, Xu P, Li H, Chen R, Zheng C, Zhang L, Huang W (2014) Thermally activated delayed fluorescence materials towards the breakthrough of organoelectronics. Adv Mater 26:7931–7958
Shizu K, Uejima M, Nomura H, Sato T, Tanaka K, Kaji H, Adachi C (2015) Enhanced electroluminescence from a thermally activated delayed-fluorescence emitter by suppressing nonradiative decay. Phys Rev Appl 3:014001
Zhang Q, Kuwabara H, Potscavage WJ Jr, Huang S, Hatae Y, Shibata T, Adachi C (2014) Anthraquinone-based intramolecular charge-transfer compounds: computational molecular design, thermally activated delayed fluorescence, and highly efficient red electroluminescence. J Am Chem Soc 136:18070–18081
Serevičius T, Nakagawa T, Kuo M-C, Cheng S-H, Wong K-T, Chang C-H, Kwong RC, Xia S, Adachi C (2013) Enhanced electroluminescence based on thermally activated delayed fluorescence from a carbazole–triazine derivative. Phys Chem Chem Phys 15:15850–15855
Lee SY, Yasuda T, Park IS, Adachi C (2015) X-shaped benzoylbenzophenone derivatives with crossed donors and acceptors for highly efficient thermally activated delayed fluorescence. Dalton Trans 44:8356–8359
Huang SP, Zhang QS, Shiota Y, Nakagawa T, Kuwabara K, Yoshizawa K, Adachi C (2013) Computational prediction for singlet- and triplet-transition energies of charge-transfer compounds. J Chem Theory Comput 9:3872–3877
Lu T, Chen FW (2012) Multiwfn: a multifunctional wavefunction analyzer. J Comput Chem 33:580–592
Frisch MJ, Trucks GW, Schlegel HB, Scuseria GE, Robb MA, Cheeseman JR, Scalmani G, Barone V, Mennucci B, Petersson GA, Nakatsuji H, Caricato M, Li X, Hratchian HP, Izmaylov AF, Bloino J, Zheng G, Sonnenberg JL, Hada M, Ehara M, Toyota K, Fukuda R, Hasegawa J, Ishida M, Nakajima T, Honda Y, Kitao O, Nakai H, Vreven T, Montgomery JA Jr, Peralta JE, Ogliaro F, Bearpark M, Heyd JJ, Brothers E, Kudin KN, Staroverov VN, Kobayashi R, Normand J, Raghavachari K, Rendell A, Burant JC, Iyengar SS, Tomasi J, Cossi M, Rega N, Millam JM, Klene, M, Knox JE, Cross JB, Bakken V, Adamo C, Jaramillo J, Gomperts R, Stratmann R E, Yazyev O, Austin AJ, Cammi, R, Pomelli C, Ochterski JW, Martin RL, Morokuma K, Zakrzewski VG, Voth GA, Salvador P, Dannenberg JJ, Dapprich S, Daniels AD, Farkas Ö, Foresman JB, Ortiz JV, Cioslowski J, Fox DJ (2009) Gaussian Inc., Wallingford
Lan Y-K, Huang C-I (2008) A theoretical study of the charge transfer behavior of the highly regioregular poly-3-hexylthiophene in the ordered state. J Phys Chem B 112:14857–14862
Rodriguez-Monge L, Larsson S (1996) Conductivity in polyacetylene. Ab initio calculations for a two-site model for electron transfer. J Phys Chem C 100:6298–6303
Martinelli NG, Idé J, Sánchez-Carrera RS, Coropceanu V, Brédas J-L, Ducasse L, Castet F, Cornil J, Beljonne D (2010) Influence of structural dynamics on polarization energies in anthracene single crystals. J Phys Chem C 114:20678–20685
McMahon DP, Troisi A (2010) Evaluation of the external reorganization energy of polyacenes. J Phys Chem L 1:941–946
Zhang Y, Dong H, Tang Q, He Y, Hu W (2010) Mobility dependence on the conducting channel dimension of organic field-effect transistors based on single-crystalline nanoribbons. J Mater Chem 20:7029–7033
Han C, Zhao Y, Xu H, Chen J, Deng Z, Ma D, Li Q, Yan P (2011) A simple phosphine–oxide host with a multi-insulating structure: high triplet energy level for efficient blue electrophosphorescence. Chem-Eur J 17:5800–5803
Son KS, Yahiro M, Imai T, Yoshizaki H, Adachi C (2008) Analyzing bipolar carrier transport characteristics of diarylamino-substituted heterocyclic compounds in organic light-emitting diodes by probing electroluminescence spectra. Chem Mater 20:4439–4446
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11374195 and 21403133). Thanks to the Taishan Scholar Project of Shandong Province and the Scientific Research Foundation of Shandong Normal University. Thanks to the Promotive Research Fund for Excellent Young and Middle-aged Scientists of Shandong Province (Grant No. BS2014CL001) and the General Financial Grant from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2014 M560571). Great thanks to Professor Yi Luo and Qisheng Zhang for their helpful suggestion and discussion in the detail calculation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fan, J., Wang, X., Lin, L. et al. Efficient modulation of optical and electrical properties of X-shaped thermally activated delayed fluorescence emitters by substitution. J Mol Model 22, 173 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00894-016-3047-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00894-016-3047-4