Despite the fast boom of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters bearing borane-based acceptor, so far, no TADF emitter with a direct B-N linkage between N-donor and boryl acceptor has been reported. The latter should simplify the molecular architecture and hence facilitate the synthetic design and versatility. We report here the preparation and characterization of a new series of N-borylated compounds with functional acridine donor unit; namely: ACBM, PACBM, and SACBM. Spectroscopic studies were performed to explore their photophysical properties that exhibited prominent solvatochromism and thermally activated delayed fluorescence. The time-dependent DFT calculation indicated the involvement of substantial intramolecular charge transfer character for which HOMO and LUMO are spatially separated. For compound SACBM, fabrication of green emitting OLED gave CIE chromaticity of (0.22, 0.59) and maximum external quantum efficiency, luminance efficiency and power efficiency of 19.1%, 60.9 cd/A, and 43.6 lm/W, respectively, demonstrating for the first time the highly efficient OLEDs using N-borylated TADF emitters.
Keywords: acridine; borane; organic light emitting diodes; solvatochromism; thermally activated delay fluorescence.