High-Performance White Organic Light-Emitting Diodes with Simplified Structure Incorporating Novel Exciplex-Forming Host

It is a challenge to engineer white organic light-emitting diodes (WOLEDs) with high efficiency, low operating voltage, good color quality, and low efficiency roll-off, simultaneously. Herein, we employ a novel exciplex to solve this problem, which mixes a bipolar host material 2,6-bis(3-(carbazol-9-yl)phenyl)pyridine (26DCzPPy) with a common electron-transporting material 4,6-bis[3,5-(dipyrid-4-yl)phenyl]-2-methylpyrimidine (B4PyMPM) to form the host for a blue emitter iridium(III)bis(4,6-(difluorophenyl)-pyridinato- N,C 2 ′) picolinate (FIrpic). The blue OLED with maximum power efficiency (PE) over 48 lm W –1 and Commission International de I’Eclairage chromaticity diagram (0.17, 0.36) was achieved. To obtain white light emission, a complementary orange emission layer is used, which consists of the bis(4-phenylth-ieno[3,2- c ]pyridine)(acetylacetonate)iridium(III) (PO-01) doped into the single host of 26DCzPPy adjacent to the blue emission layer. Benefiting from the exciplex and effective utilization of the excitons by using the optimized multifunctional device structure, the WOLEDs remarkably exhibit maximum external quantum efficiency, PE, and current efficiency of 28.5%, 95.5 lm W –1, and 82.0 cd A –1, respectively. At the luminance of 100 cd m –2, it maintains the values of 27.2%, 90.2 lm W –1, and 78.4 cd A –1, respectively. Furthermore, the WOLEDs have a low threshold voltage of about 2.6 V and remain around 4.0 V at 10 000 cd m –2 . These results indicate that the exciplex-forming co-host 26DCzPPy:B4PyMPM can provide an effective strategy to fabricate high-efficiency WOLEDs for potential applications.