Nature Communications (Sep 2024)

Harmonization of rapid triplet up-conversion and singlet radiation enables efficient and stable white OLEDs

  • Manli Huang,
  • Zhanxiang Chen,
  • Jingsheng Miao,
  • Siyuan He,
  • Wei Yang,
  • Zhongyan Huang,
  • Yang Zou,
  • Shaolong Gong,
  • Yao Tan,
  • Chuluo Yang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52401-7
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 15, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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Abstract White organic light-emitting diodes (WOLEDs) hold significant promise in illumination and displays, but achieving high efficiency while maintaining stability is an ongoing challenge. Here, we strategically combine a blue donor-acceptor thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitter featuring rapid reverse intersystem crossing rate and a yellow multi-resonance TADF emitter renowned for the fast radiative transition process to achieve warm WOLEDs with exceptional power efficiency exceeding 190 lm W−1 and external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 39%, setting records for WOLEDs. Meanwhile, these devices also exhibit an extended operational lifetime (LT80) of 446 h at an initial luminance of 1000 cd m−2. Another group of blue and yellow emitters based on our strategy achieves a standard white emission and a high EQE of 35.6%, confirming the universality of our strategy. This work presents a versatile strategy to harmonize singlet exciton radiation and triplet exciton up-conversion, thus achieving a win-win situation of efficiency and stability.