High-Efficiency Solution-Processed Organic Light-Emitting Diodes with Tetradentate Platinum(II) Emitters

The realization of high-efficiency solution-processed organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) using phosphorescent tetradentate Pt(II) emitters and bipolar organic hosts is demonstrated in this work. To investigate the effect of organic host on the platinum dopant, the performances of solution-processed Pt-OLEDs with various combinations between four tetradentate Pt(II) emitters, including two newly developed tetra-Pt-S2 and tetra-Pt-S3 and three bipolar organic hosts m-TPAPy, o-TPAPy, and o-CzPy, have been analyzed and compared. Among the tetradentate Pt(II) complexes studied in this work, tetra-Pt-S3 exhibited the best electroluminescent performance attributable to its bulky molecular scaffold structure, high emission quantum yield, and good solubility in common organic solvents. High external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) of up to 22.4% were achieved in the solution-processed OLED with tetra-Pt-S3 emitter and m-TPAPy host at the dopant concentration of 4 wt %. At a high luminance of 1000 cd m-2, the EQE of this device decreased slightly to 21.0%.