Atomic Precision Graphene Model Compound for Bright Electrochemiluminescence and Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

Liuqing Yang; Arthur D Hendsbee; Qin Xue; Shuijian He; Cindy R De-Jager; Guohua Xie; Gregory C Welch; Zhifeng Ding

doi:10.1021/acsami.0c16238

Atomic Precision Graphene Model Compound for Bright Electrochemiluminescence and Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2020 Nov 18;12(46):51736-51743. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c16238. Epub 2020 Nov 6.

Authors

Liuqing Yang¹, Arthur D Hendsbee², Qin Xue^{3

4}, Shuijian He¹, Cindy R De-Jager¹, Guohua Xie^{3

4}, Gregory C Welch², Zhifeng Ding¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, The University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond Street, London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada.
² Department of Chemistry, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive N.W., Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada.
³ Sauvage Center for Molecular Sciences, Hubei Key Lab on Organic and Polymeric Optoelectronic Materials, Department of Chemistry, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
⁴ Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.

PMID: 33155464
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c16238

Abstract

An N-annulated perylene diimide dimer, tPDI₂N-hex, a graphene model compound with atomic precision, was investigated for luminescence applications. Electrochemiluminescence (ECL) of tPDI₂N-hex was studied with tri-n-propylamine (TPrA) as a reducing coreactant. ECL-voltage curves along with spooling ECL spectra provided details of light generation mechanisms. The relative ECL quantum efficiency of the Ru(bpy)₃(PF₆)₂/TPrA system was calculated to be 64%, which is superior to that of many other organic molecules because of the desired excited state in the absence of surface states. An organic light-emitting diode (OLED) fabricated with tPDI₂N-hex displayed bright orange-red emission with a low color temperature, which is very desirable. It is plausible that the sterically constrained and thus orthogonal aromatic moieties in the tPDI₂N-hex structure, with atomic precision graphene layer characteristics, lead to the excellent luminescence performances. The ECL and OLED studies of tPDI₂N-hex showcase great application potentials of tPDI₂N-hex in both solution-based ECL probes and solid-state light devices.

Keywords: N-annulated perylene diimide; efficient solid-state lighting; electrochemiluminescence; graphene analogues with atomic precision; organic light-emitting diode.