Thermally activated delayed fluorescent (TADF) materials are advantageous as emitters in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) due to their ability to utilize all excited states formed by charge recombination for light emission, potentially leading to 100% internal quantum efficiency. As in conventional fluorescent or phosphorescent OLEDs, TADF emitters are commonly doped at a relatively low concentration in a host matrix. However, increasing evidence suggests that balanced ambipolar transport properties and small aggregation-induced fluorescence quenching allow TADF emitters to be used alone in so-called host-free OLEDs. Here, we report host-free OLEDs in which the emissive layers (EMLs) consist solely of a yellow-green-emitting TADF compound, 5,5'-(2,3,5,6-tetra(carbazol-9-yl)-1,4-phenylene)bis(2-(4-( tert-butyl)phenyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole), TCZPBOX. Devices with this host-free EML yield a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 21%, current efficacy (CE) of 73 cd/A, and power efficacy (PE) of 79 lm/W at a luminance of 10 cd/m2. At a high luminance of 10,000 cd/m2, a high EQE of 13% is maintained. A maximum luminance of 120,000 cd/m2 is reached at an applied voltage of 9.8 V. When TCZPBOX was doped in the host 2,6-di(carbazol-9-yl)-pyridine (PYD2) at 40 wt %, the device yielded a maximum EQE of 28%, CE of 94 cd/A, and PE of 100 lm/W at 10 cd/m2.
Keywords: concentration quenching; guest−host systems; host-free emissive layers; organic light-emitting diode; thermally activated delayed fluorescence.