Longevity gene responsible for robust blue organic materials employing thermally activated delayed fluorescence.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37400475.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-39697-7 and PMC identifier 10318018.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The 3<sup>rd</sup>-Gen OLED materials employing thermally-activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) combine advantages of first two for high-efficiency and low-cost devices. Though urgently needed, blue TADF emitters have not met stability requirement for applications. It is essential to elucidate the degradation mechanism and identify the tailored descriptor for material stability and device lifetime. Here, via in-material chemistry, we demonstrate chemical degradation of TADF materials involves critical role of bond cleavage at triplet state rather than singlet, and disclose the difference between bond dissociation energy of fragile bonds and first triplet state energy (BDE-E<sub>T1</sub>) is linearly correlated with logarithm of reported device lifetime for various blue TADF emitters. This significant quantitative correlation strongly reveals the degradation mechanism of TADF materials have general characteristic in essence and BDE-E<sub>T1</sub> could be the shared "longevity gene". Our findings provide a critical molecular descriptor for high-throughput-virtual-screening and rational design to unlock the full potential of TADF materials and devices.