Ken-Tsung Wong

Bipolar Host Materials: A Chemical Approach for Highly Efficient Electrophosphorescent Devices

The future of organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) is drifting from electrofluorescence toward electrophosphorescence due to the feasibility of realizing 100% internal quantum efficiency. There is limited availability of transition metals (TMs) such as Ir, Os, and Pt, which are used for color-tunable phosphorescent emitters, and the use of the host-guest strategy is necessary for suppressing the detrimental triplet-triplet annihilation inherently imparted by the TM-centered emitters. The inevitable demands of organic host materials provide organic chemists with tremendous opportunities to contribute their expertise to this technology. With suitable molecular design and judicious selection of chemical structures featured with different electronic nature, the incorporation of hole-transporting (HT) and electron-transporting (ET) moieties combines the advantages of both functional units into bipolar host materials, which perform balanced injection/transportation/recombination of charge carriers and consequentially lead the OLEDs to have higher performances and low roll-off efficiencies. This review highlights recently developed bipolar host materials with the focus on molecular design strategies and the structure-property-performance relationships of various classes of bipolar host materials, which are classified into several categories according to the structural features of their constituents (HT/ET blocks and spacers).

Electroluminescence based on thermally activated delayed fluorescence generated by a spirobifluorene donor-acceptor structure

An organic light emitting diode based on thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) has been produced using a spirobifluorene derivative (Spiro-CN) having the donor-acceptor moieties as an emitter.

Vacuum-Deposited Small-Molecule Organic Solar Cells with High Power Conversion Efficiencies by Judicious Molecular Design and Device Optimization

Three new tailor-made molecules (DPDCTB, DPDCPB, and DTDCPB) were strategically designed and convergently synthesized as donor materials for small-molecule organic solar cells. These compounds possess a donor-acceptor-acceptor molecular architecture, in which various electron-donating moieties are connected to an electron-withdrawing dicyanovinylene moiety through another electron-accepting 2,1,3-benzothiadiazole block. The molecular structures and crystal packings of DTDCPB and the previously reported DTDCTB were characterized by single-crystal X-ray crystallography. Photophysical and electrochemical properties as well as energy levels of this series of donor molecules were thoroughly investigated, affording clear structure-property relationships. By delicate manipulation of the trade-off between the photovoltage and the photocurrent via molecular structure engineering together with device optimizations, which included fine-tuning the layer thicknesses and the donor:acceptor blended ratio in the bulk heterojunction layer, vacuum-deposited hybrid planar-mixed heterojunction devices utilizing DTDCPB as the donor and C(70) as the acceptor showed the best performance with a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 6.6 ± 0.2% (the highest PCE of 6.8%), along with an open-circuit voltage (V(oc)) of 0.93 ± 0.02 V, a short-circuit current density (J(sc)) of 13.48 ± 0.27 mA/cm(2), and a fill factor (FF) of 0.53 ± 0.02, under 1 sun (100 mW/cm(2)) AM 1.5G simulated solar illumination.

Sky‐Blue Organic Light Emitting Diode with 37% External Quantum Efficiency Using Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence from Spiroacridine‐Triazine Hybrid

Extremely efficient sky-blue organic electroluminescence with external quantum efficiency of ≈37% is achieved in a conventional planar device structure, using a highly efficient thermally activated delayed fluorescence emitter based on the spiroacridine-triazine hybrid and simultaneously possessing nearly unitary (100%) photoluminescence quantum yield, excellent thermal stability, and strongly horizontally oriented emitting dipoles (with a horizontal dipole ratio of 83%).

A Low-Energy-Gap Organic Dye for High-Performance Small-Molecule Organic Solar Cells

A novel donor-acceptor-acceptor (D-A-A) donor molecule, DTDCTB, in which an electron-donating ditolylaminothienyl moiety and an electron-withdrawing dicyanovinylene moiety are bridged by another electron-accepting 2,1,3-benzothiadiazole block, has been synthesized and characterized. A vacuum-deposited organic solar cell employing DTDCTB combined with the electron acceptor C(70) achieved a record-high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 5.81%. The respectable PCE is attributed to the solar spectral response extending to the near-IR region and the ultracompact absorption dipole stacking of the DTDCTB thin film.

Organic dyes containing coplanar diphenyl-substituted dithienosilole core for efficient dye-sensitized solar cells.

Two new organic dyes adopting coplanar diphenyl-substituted dithienosilole as the central linkage have been synthesized, characterized, and used as the sensitizers for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The best DSSC exhibited a high power conversion efficiency up to 7.6% (TP6CADTS) under AM 1.5G irradiation, reaching approximately 96% of the ruthenium dye N719-based reference cell under the same conditions.

A new benzimidazole/carbazole hybrid bipolar material for highly efficient deep-blue electrofluorescence, yellow–green electrophosphorescence, and two-color-based white OLEDs

The bipolar molecule CPhBzIm exhibits an excellent solid state photoluminescence quantum yield (ΦPL = 69%), triplet energy (ET = 2.48 eV), and bipolar charge transport ability (μh ≈ μe ≈ 10−6–10−5 cm2 V−1 s−1). We have used it to fabricate a non-doped deep-blue organic light emitting diode (OLED) exhibiting promising performance [ηext = 3%; CIE = (0.16, 0.05)] and to serve as host material for a yellow–green phosphorescent OLED [ηext = 19.2%; CIE = (0.42, 0.56)]. Exploiting these dual roles, we used CPhBzIm in a simple singly doped, two-color-based white OLED (ηext = 7%; CIE = 0.31, 0.33).

Highly bright blue organic light-emitting devices using spirobifluorene-cored conjugated compounds

An efficient and morphologically stable pyrimidine-containing spirobifluorene-cored oligoaryl, 2,7-bis[2-(4-tert-butylphenyl)pyrimidine-5-yl]-9,9′-spirobifluorene (TBPSF), as an emitter or a host for blue organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs), is reported. The steric hindrance inherent with the molecular structure renders the material a record-high neat-film photoluminescence (PL) quantum yield of 80% as a pure blue emitter (PL peak at 430 nm) of low molecular weight, and a very high glass-transition temperature (Tg) of 195 °C. Blue OLEDs employing this compound as the emitter or the emitting host exhibit unusual endurance for high currents over 5000 mA/cm2. When TBPSF is used as a host for perylene in a blue OLED, maximal brightness of ∼80 000 cd/m2 had been achieved, representing the highest values reported for blue OLEDs under dc driving.

1,3,5-Triazine derivatives as new electron transport–type host materials for highly efficient green phosphorescent OLEDs

We have synthesized three star-shaped 1,3,5-triazine derivatives—2,4,6-tris(biphenyl-3-yl)-1,3,5-triazine (T2T), 2,4,6-tris(triphenyl-3-yl)-1,3,5-triazine (T3T), and 2,4,6-tris(9,9′-spirobifluorene-2-yl)-1,3,5-triazine (TST)—as new electron transport (ET)-type host materials for green phosphorescent organic light-emitting devices. The morphological, thermal, and photophysical properties and the electron mobilities of these ET-type host materials are influenced by the nature of the aryl substituents attached to the triazene core. The meta–meta linkage between the 1,3,5-triazine core and the peripheral aryl moieties in T2T and T3T limited the effective extension of their π conjugation, leading to high triplet energies of 2.80 and 2.69 eV, respectively. Time-of-flight mobility measurements revealed the good electron mobilities for these compounds (each > 10−4 cm2V−1 s−1), following the order T3T > TST > T2T. The device incorporating T2T as the host, doped with (PPy)2Ir(acac) and 1,3,5-tris(N-phenylbenzimidizol-2-yl)benzene (TBPI) as the ET layer, achieved a high external quantum efficiency (ηext) of 17.5% and a power efficiency (ηp) of 59.0 lm W−1. For the same device configuration, the T3T-based device provided values of ηext and ηp of 14.4% and 50.6 lm W−1, respectively; the TST-based device provided values of 5.1% and 12.3 lm W−1, respectively. We ascribe the superior performance of the T2T-based devices to balanced charge recombination; we ascribe the poor efficiencies of the TST-based devices to its relatively low triplet energy (2.54 eV), which did not allow efficient confinement of the triplet excitons on the green phosphorescent emitter (PPy)2Ir(acac).

Spirobifluorene-Bridged Donor/Acceptor Dye for Organic Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

A new dye, SSD1, featuring two donor/acceptor chromophores aligned in a spiro configuration with two anchoring groups separated at a distance of 10.05 A (closely matching the distance between the adsorption sites of the anatase TiO(2) surface) undergoes efficient dye adherence on TiO(2) films. A dye-sensitized solar cell incorporating SSD1 exhibited a short-circuit current of 8.9 mA cm(-2), an open-circuit voltage of 0.63 V, a fill factor of 0.67, and a power conversion efficiency of 3.75%.