Bipolar host materials: a chemical approach for highly efficient electrophosphorescent devices

The future of organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) is drifting from electrofluorescence toward electrophosphorescence due to the feasibility of realizing 100% internal quantum efficiency. There is limited availability of transition metals (TMs) such as Ir, Os, and Pt, which are used for color-tunable phosphorescent emitters, and the use of the host-guest strategy is necessary for suppressing the detrimental triplet-triplet annihilation inherently imparted by the TM-centered emitters. The inevitable demands of organic host materials provide organic chemists with tremendous opportunities to contribute their expertise to this technology. With suitable molecular design and judicious selection of chemical structures featured with different electronic nature, the incorporation of hole-transporting (HT) and electron-transporting (ET) moieties combines the advantages of both functional units into bipolar host materials, which perform balanced injection/transportation/recombination of charge carriers and consequentially lead the OLEDs to have higher performances and low roll-off efficiencies. This review highlights recently developed bipolar host materials with the focus on molecular design strategies and the structure-property-performance relationships of various classes of bipolar host materials, which are classified into several categories according to the structural features of their constituents (HT/ET blocks and spacers).     

Novel heterocyclic based blue and green emissive materials for opto-electronics

Two different novel heterocyclic compounds namely 2,5-bis(1,3-diphenyl-4,5-dihydro-1H-pyrazol-5-yl)thiophene (Material I) and 2,5-bis(3-(naphthalen-1-yl)-1-phenyl-4,5-dihydro-1H-pyrazol-5-yl)thiophene (Material II) were designed, synthesized and characterized by spectral methods. The synthesized materials were confirmed by standard techniques such as FT-IR, ¹H NMR and elemental analysis. Physical properties include thermal, surface morphology of the materials were explained from TGA, DSC and SEM analysis. Optical properties such as absorption, emission, solvent effect have been investigated by UV–Visible and fluorescence spectrophotometers. The blue and green emission of the materials was confirmed by using UV light as well as fluorescence spectrophotometers. Bandgap energies of these materials were obtained by both experimental and theoretical calculation from of cyclic voltammetry, UV–Visible spectrophotometer and DFT calculation. I–V characteristic analysis used to determine the threshold voltage (V_on) of the two materials. The obtained results of the materials have promising to be applicable for opto-electronic applications.     

White OLEDs based on novel emissive materials such as Zn(HPB)2 and Zn(HPB)q

Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) show a lot of advantages for display purposes. Because OLEDs provide white light emission with high efficiency and stability, it is desirable to apply OLEDs as an illumination light source and backlight in LCD displays. We synthesized new emissive materials, namely [2-(2-hydroxyphenyl)benzoxazole] (Zn(HPB)₂) and [(2-(2-hydroxyphenyl)benzoxazole)(8-hydoxyquinoline)] (Zn(HPB)q), which have a low molecular compound and thermal stability. We studied white OLEDs using Zn(HPB)₂ and Zn(HPB)q. The fundamental structures of the white OLEDs were ITO/PEDOT:PSS (23 nm)/NPB (40 nm)/Zn(HPB)₂ (40 nm)/Zn(HPB)q (20, 30 or 40 nm)/Alq₃ (10 nm)/LiAl (120 nm). As a result, when the thickness of the Zn(HPB)q layer was 20 nm, white emission is achieved. We obtained a maximum luminance of 15325 cd/m² at a current density of 997 mA/cm². The CIE (Commission International de l'Eclairage) coordinates are (0.28, 0.35) at an applied voltage of 9.75 V.     

Ternary ambipolar phosphine oxide hosts based on indirect linkage for highly efficient blue electrophosphorescence: towards high triplet energy, low driving voltage and stable efficiencies

The effective strategy of indirect linakge for constructing ternary ambipolar phosphine oxide (PO) hosts with the high first triplet energy levels (T(1)) was successfully demonstrated. The interplay between the chromophore, hole and electron transporting moieties was effectively restrained. Both of T(1) as high as 3.0 eV and ambipolar characteristics were perfectly realized, which consequently resulted in the highly efficient blue-emitting phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes with low driving voltage and stable efficiencies.