Enhanced Efficiency of Exciplex Emission from a 9-Phenylfluorene Derivative

The exciplex-thermally activated delayed fluorescence (exciplex-TADF) system is an excellent candidate for the fabrication of high-efficiency organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) because of its more easily achieved small singlet-triplet energy splitting (ΔEST) and doping control. However, exciplex-TADF is still faced with the problems of low external quantum efficiency (ηext) and unclear effect of structure modification in electron acceptors. Herein, we provide a steric hindrance increase strategy to obtain high-efficiency exciplex emissions. Through introducing a 9-phenylfluorene group into N-ethylcarbazole of the dicyano-substituted 9-phenylfluorene, an electron acceptor material with increased steric hindrance is obtained, which helps the exciplex harvest a larger driving force and higher emission efficiencies. Encouragingly, the obtained OLED displays a maximum ηext of 25.8%, which is one of the best efficiency values among reported exciplex-OLEDs, simultaneously possessing excellent current efficiency of 83.6 cd A-1 and power efficiency of 93.7 lm W-1. It is expected that this work will offer a new avenue for designing electron acceptors for highly efficient exciplex emissions.