Gold(I) Multi-Resonance Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescent Emitters for Highly Efficient Ultrapure-Green Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

Acceleration of singlet-triplet intersystem crossings (ISC) is instrumental in bolstering triplet exciton harvesting of multi-resonance thermally activated delayed fluorescent (MR-TADF) emitters. This work describes a simple gold(I) coordination strategy to enhance the spin-orbit coupling of green and blue BN(O)-based MR-TADF emitters, which results in a notable increase in rate constants of the spectroscopically observed ISC process to 3×10 s with nearly unitary ISC quantum yields. Accordingly, the resultant thermally-stable Au emitters attained large values of delayed fluorescence radiative rate constant up to 1.3×10/1.7×10 s in THF/PMMA film while preserving narrowband emissions (FWHM=30–37 nm) and high emission quantum yields (ca. 0.9). The vapor-deposited ultrapure-green OLEDs fabricated with these Au emitters delivered high luminance of up to 2.53×10 cd m as well as external quantum efficiencies of up to 30.3 % with roll-offs as low as 0.8 % and long device lifetimes (LT) of 1210 h at 1000 cd m.