Efficient near-infrared organic light-emitting devices based on low-gap fluorescent oligomers

We report efficient near-infrared (NIR) organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) based on fluorescent donor-acceptor-donor conjugated oligomers. The energies of the highest occupied and lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals of these oligomers are controlled by the donor and acceptor components, respectively; hence the energy gap and therefore the emission wavelength can be tuned by changing the strengths of the donor and acceptor components. External quantum efficiencies (EQEs) up to 1.6% and power efficiencies up to 7.0 mW/W are achieved in NIR OLEDs based on 4,9-bis(2,3-dihydrothieno[3,4-b][1,4]dioxin-5-yl)-6,7-dimethyl-[1,2,5]thiadiazolo[3,4-g]-quinoxaline (BEDOT-TQMe2), in which the electroluminescence peaks at a wavelength of 692 nm but extends to well above 800 nm. With a stronger acceptor in the oligomer, 4,8-bis(2,3-dihydrothieno-[3,4-b][1,4]dioxin-5-yl)benzo[1,2-c;4,5-c′]bis [1,2,5]thiadiazole (BEDOT-BBT) based devices show longer wavelength emission peaked at 815 nm, although the maximum EQE is reduced to 0.51% due to the lower fluorescent quantum yield of the NIR emitter. The efficiencies of these NIR OLEDs are further increased by two to three times by using the sensitized fluorescent device structure, leading to a maximum EQE of 3.1% for BEDOT-TQMe2 and 1.6% for BEDOT-BBT based devices.