Efficient deep-red Aggregate-Induced emission material and “Hot-exciton” electroluminescence

Organic deep-red fluorescent materials have a wide range of applications in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), biological imaging, night-vision equipment, and other fields. Here, we designed and synthesized a new deep-red emissive donor–acceptor (D-A) compound TPANZPPICN, whose non-doped OLED achieves stable pure deep-red electroluminescence (EL) at 692 nm with a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 2.67 % in non-doped OLED and a maximum EQE of 7.96 % at 660 nm in doped OLED. Magneto-electroluminescence (MEL) measurements reveal a negative response in the doped OLED, which is a significant character of reversed intersystem crossing (RISC) on high-lying excited states. Both theoretical calculations and experimental results confirm that the hot-exciton mechanism is responsible for the high efficiency EL of doped OLED, which proves to be a novel approach to realize the efficient deep-red organic fluorescent OLEDs.