Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence Emitters with Intramolecular Proton Transfer for High Luminance Solution-Processed Organic Light-Emitting Diodes.

We report an organic emitter containing a β-triketone electron acceptor core and phenoxazine as the electron donors () for solution-processed organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). The resulting molecule is very unusual because it shows both thermally activated delayed fluorescence and intramolecular proton transfer. We compare its performance with the previously reported diketone analogue . Solution-processed OLEDs of and show maximum external quantum efficiencies of 20.1 and 12.7%, respectively. The results obtained for the solution-processed -based device are as good as the previously reported evaporated device. At a very high luminance of 10,000 cd m, the efficiencies of the OLEDs were 10.6% for and 4.7% for , demonstrating a relatively low efficiency roll-off for TADF materials. The low efficiency roll-off was rationalized on the basis of the short delayed lifetimes of 1.35 μs for and 1.44 μs for . Our results suggest that intramolecular proton transfer may be useful for the design of OLED materials with a low efficiency roll-off.