Highly Efficient Doping‐Free Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescent Organic Light‐Emitting Diodes with an Ultrathin Quasi‐Host‐Guest Emission Layer

Abstract

AbstractDoping‐free organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) are beneficial to reduce manufacturing costs for mass production, which, however, are limited by the ubiquitous aggregation‐caused quenching (ACQ) effect, especially for thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters with relatively long exciton lifetimes. Herein, two typical TADF emitters pACRS and pACRSO with different sulfur atom valence states are developed, where pACRS with a thioether unit exhibits suppressed intermolecular interaction, alleviated ACQ effect, and higher efficiency in a conventional doping‐free device, in contract to pACRSO with a sulfone unit. It is of interest that comparable efficiencies are achieved for both emitters in doping‐free OLEDs with an ultrathin emission layer (UEML), in which the emitter molecules are deposited onto the surface of the underlying organic layer of host material to form an ultrathin quasi‐host‐guest system with alleviated ACQ effect. Besides, the suppressed trap effect is the key to guarantee the efficiency of UEML‐OLEDs, while different intermolecular interactions of emitters that determine the optimized UEML thickness will affect the efficiency roll‐off. Furthermore, benefiting from the UEML structure, highly efficient doping‐free OLEDs are also successfully achieved for red TADF emitters with stronger intermolecular interactions. Such an UEML strategy meeting efficiency and cost demands holds great promise for doping‐free OLEDs.