Simultaneous enhancement of thermally activated delayed fluorescence and photoluminescence quantum yield via homoconjugation

Stephanie Montanaro, Piotr Pander, Jai-Ram Mistry, Mark Elsegood, Simon Teat, Andrew Bond, Iain A. Wright*, Daniel G. Congrave*, Marc Etherington*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

A critical challenge facing thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) is to facilitate rapid and efficient electronic transitions while ensuring a narrow singlet-triplet energy gap (ΔEST) in a single luminophore. We present a TADF-active iptycene that clearly demonstrates that homoconjugation can be harnessed as a viable design strategy toward answering this challenge. A homoconjugated analogue of an established quinoxaline-based TADF luminophore has been produced by trimerization through an iptycene core. Homoconjugation was confirmed by electrochemistry, and as a direct consequence of this phenomenon we observed synergistic improvements to photoluminescence quantum yield (ΦPL), radiative rate of singlet decay (krS), delayed fluorescence lifetime (τTADF), and rate of reverse intersystem crossing (krISC), all while narrowing the ΔEST. The enhancement is rationalised with TD-DFT calculations including spin-orbit coupling (SOC). A facile synthesis, the ubiquity of the pyrazine motif in state-of-the-art TADF materials of all colours, and the extent of the overall performance enhancement leads to a great potential for generality.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)6306-6313
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Materials Chemistry C
Volume10
Issue number16
Early online date25 Mar 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Apr 2022

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