Orange-Red Thermally Activated Delay Fluorescence Emitters Based On Asymmetric Difluoroboron Chelated Enaminone: Impact Of Donor Position On Luminescent Properties

Asymmetric enaminone difluoroboron complexes (BFs) exhibit highly solid emission and appropriated electron-accepting properties, whereas the position of the substituents has a significant influence on their optical properties due to the structural asymmetry. In this work, we employed BF as acceptor and 9,9-dimethylacridine (DMAC) as donor to construct two thermally activated delay fluorescence (TADF) molecules DMAC-BF and BF-DMAC, in which DMAC unit was set on the B-O and B-N sides of BF, respectively. DMAC-BF and BF-DMAC exhibited the broad orange-red emission bands in toluene, while they emitted yellow and red fluorescence in solid state, respectively. The photoluminescence quantum yield (PLOY) of DMAC-BF (52%) is higher than that of BF-DMAC (29%), owing to its lower nonradiative decay rate. Solution-processed organic light-emitting diode (OLED) devices based on both of DMAC-BF and BF-DMAC exhibited orange-red electroluminicence spectra. Owing to its higher photoluminescence quantum yield, DMAC-BF-based OLED exhibited better electroluminicence performance with a maximum current efficiency of 24.9 cd/A, a maximum power efficiency of 23.0 lm/W, and a maximum EQE of 11.3%.