Two benzoylpyridine-carbazole based fluorescence materials DCBPy and DTCBPy, bearing two carbazolyl and 4-(t-butyl)carbazolyl groups, respectively, at the meta and ortho carbons of the benzoyl ring, were synthesized. These molecules show very small ΔEST of 0.03 and 0.04 eV and transient PL characteristics indicating that they are thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials. In addition, they show extremely different photoluminescent quantum yields in solution and in the solid state: in cyclohexane the value are 14 and 36%, but in the thin films, the value increase to 88.0 and 91.4%, respectively. The OLEDs using DCBPy and DTCBPy as dopants emit blue and green light with EQEs of 24.0 and 27.2%, respectively, and with low efficiency roll-off at practical brightness level. The crystal structure of DTCBPy reveals a substantial interaction between the ortho donor (carbazolyl) and acceptor (4-pyridylcarbonyl) unit. This interaction between donor and acceptor substituents likely play a key role to achieve very small ΔEST with high photoluminescence quantum yield.

Recently, thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials have become the most promising hosts for realizing high-performance phosphorescent and fluorescent organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) because of their ability to upconvert triplet excitons to singlet excitons. However, despite a few TADF hosts having been introduced for low energy phosphorescent and fluorescent dopants, developing host materials with TADF properties for blue phosphorescent and TADF OLEDs is still a great challenge to date. In this study, bipolar hosts exhibiting TADF behavior and high triplet energy, consisting of the carbazole group as the donor, diphenylsulphone moiety as the acceptor, and m-bitolyl as the π-conjugated bridge, are synthesized and applied for the first time to blue devices. The ΔE ST value of the TADF host is tuned via the introduction of a cyano group in the carbazole moiety due to the increase of the LE contribution in the CT excited state. Detailed photophysical studies confirm the efficient TADF properties of bipolar hosts. The blue phosphorescent and TADF devices using BT-01 as the host give external quantum efficiencies of 31.8% and 25.5%, respectively. The blue devices based on the BT-01 host exhibit superior electroluminescence performance and more reduced efficiency roll-off compared with those hosted by BT-02, ascribed to the faster reverse intersystem crossing process on the BT-01 host. These excellent results manifest that the use of the bipolar host with TADF behavior is a promising approach for the realization of highly efficient blue phosphorescent and TADF devices in the future.

The photothermal efficiencies, denoting the efficiency of transducing incident light to heat, of gold nanoparticles of different diameters (∅ = 22-86 nm) were quantified upon exposure at 532 nm. The fluorescence of tryptophan at 300-450 nm upon 280 nm excitation serves as an in situ fluorescent thermometer to illustrate the evolution of the average temperature change in the heating volume of the nanoparticle solution. The fluorescence intensity decreases as the temperature increases, having a linear gradient of 2.05% fluorescence decrease per degree Celsius increment from 20 to 45 °C. The presence of gold nanoparticles at the nM level does not perturb the temperature-dependent fluorescence of tryptophan in terms of fluorescence contour and temperature response. The heating volume was defined by overlapping the collimated 532 nm laser (∅ = 0.83 mm) for exciting the nanoparticles and the 280 nm continuous-wave beam (∅ = 0.81 mm) for exciting tryptophan in a 2 mm × 2 mm square tube, and the fluorescence was collected perpendicularly to the collinear alignment. This method has satisfactory reproducibility and a sufficient temperature detectivity of 0.2 °C. The profiles of the average temperature evolution of the mixtures containing nanoparticles and tryptophan were derived from the evolution of fluorescence and analyzed using collective energy balancing. The relative photothermal efficiencies for different sizes of gold nanoparticles with respect to the 22 nm nanoparticle agree with those predicted using Mie theory. The employment of tryptophan as a fluorescent thermometer not only provides an in situ tool to monitor the photothermal effect of nanostructures but is also applicable to thermal imaging in biological applications.

No abstract