A series of TADF emitters composed of pyrimidine/acridine moieties are developed. The optimized device realized its highest power efficiency of 62 lm W−1, a high external quantum efficiency of 25%, and a low turn-on voltage of 2.8 V with light-blue emission.

The development of efficient and robust deep-blue emitters is one of the key issues in organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) for environmentally friendly, large-area displays or general lighting. As a promising technology that realizes 100% conversion from electrons to photons, thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters have attracted considerable attention. However, only a handful of examples of deep-blue TADF emitters have been reported to date, and the emitters generally show large efficiency roll-off at practical luminance over several hundreds to thousands of cd m, most likely because of the long delayed fluorescent lifetime (τ). To overcome this problem, we molecularly manipulated the electronic excited state energies of pyrimidine-based TADF emitters to realize deep-blue emission and reduced τ. We then systematically investigated the relationships among the chemical structure, properties, and device performances. The resultant novel pyrimidine emitters, called Ac-XMHPMs (X = 1, 2, and 3), contain different numbers of bulky methyl substituents at acceptor moieties, increasing the excited singlet (E) and triplet state (E) energies. Among them, Ac-3MHPM, with a high E of 2.95 eV, exhibited a high external quantum efficiency (η) of 18% and an η of 10% at 100 cd m with Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage chromaticity coordinates of (0.16, 0.15). These efficiencies are among the highest values to date for deep-blue TADF OLEDs. Our molecular design strategy provides fundamental guidance to design novel deep-blue TADF emitters.