Not the sum of their parts: understanding multi-donor interactions in symmetric and asymmetric TADF emitters

Autor: Andrew P. Monkman, Ramunas Lygaitis, Heather F. Higginbotham, Aisha N. Bismillah, Nadzeya A. Kukhta, Andrew Danos, Dalius Gudeika, Marco Colella, Juozas V. Grazulevicius, Paul R. McGonigal
Přispěvatelé: RSC (Royal Society of Chemistry) Publishing Home
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of Materials Chemistry C, 2022, Vol.10(12), pp.4737-4747 [Peer Reviewed Journal]
ISSN: 2050-7534
2050-7526
Popis: A pair of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters with symmetric and asymmetric D-A-D structure are investigated. Despite displaying near-identical photoluminescence spectrum and quantum yields, the symmetric material possesses significantly better delayed fluorescence characteristics and OLED performance. Building on a previous study of analogous D-A materials we are able to explain these differences in terms of different strengths of electronic interactions between the two donor units. This interaction lowers the energy of the TADF-active triplet state in the asymmetric molecule, increasing its singlet–triplet energy gap and leading to worse performance. This result therefore demonstrates a new strategy to selectively control the triplet states of TADF molecules, in contrast to established control of singlet states using host environment. These results also show that multi-donor TADF emitters cannot be understood simply as the sum of their isolated parts; these parts have different electronic interactions depending on their relative positions, even when there is no scope for steric interaction.
Databáze: OpenAIRE