Single pure organic molecular white light emitters (SPOMWLEs) are of significance as a new class of material for white lighting applications; however, few of them are able to emit white electroluminescence from organic light-emitting diodes. Herein, donor-π-acceptor conjugated emitters, 2PQ-PTZ and 4PQ-PTZ, were designed and synthesized as SPOMWLEs for white light emission considering the distinct advantages of their conformation isomers. The coexistence of conformational isomers in 2PQ-PTZ, which is the first experimental evidence of the coexisting quasi-axial and quasi-equatorial conformers, provides ideal flexibility to obtain white light emission from their simultaneous and well-separated fluorescence and thermally activated delayed fluorescence. With these remarkable properties, a 2PQ-PTZ-based white light-emitting diode (LED) with a CIE of (0.32, 0.34) and color rendering index (CRI) of 89 is demonstrated. Further, the white organic light-emitting diode (OLED) of 2PQ-PTZ exhibits a high external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 10.1%, which is the reported highest performance among SPOMWLE-based OLEDs.
Keywords: TADF; conformation; phenothiazine; single organic molecular white light emitters; white organic light-emitting diodes.