Open Access
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Organic Materials 2020; 02(01): 001-010
DOI: 10.1055/s-0039-3402059
Original Article
The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). (2020) The Author(s).

Lock-and-Key Exciplexes for Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence

Authors

  • Constantin-Christian A. Voll

    a   Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Georgios Markopoulos

    a   Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Tony C. Wu

    b   Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Matthew Welborn

    a   Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Jens U. Engelhart

    a   Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Sébastien Rochat

    a   Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Grace G. D. Han

    a   Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Graham T. Sazama

    a   Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Ting-An Lin

    b   Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Troy Van Voorhis

    a   Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Marc A. Baldo

    b   Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Timothy M. Swager

    a   Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Funding Information This study was funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-18-1-0341), the Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth (DE-FG02-07ER46474), DFG (EN 1138/1-1), NIH (GM112272), and Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (PA00P2-145389).
Further Information

Publication History

Received: 19 October 2019

Accepted after revision: 05 November 2019

Publication Date:
16 January 2020 (online)


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Abstract

We combine synthetic supramolecular chemistry and materials science to develop novel exciplexes for thermally activated delayed fluorescence. Our approach starts from a bowl-shaped acceptor molecule for which we synthesize tailor-made donors that bind in a lock-and-key fashion. The donor design is guided by extensive density functional theory calculations of three independent donor families. The investigation of a large number of custom-synthesized donors allows us to derive empirical relationships for the prediction of the exciplex emission color. Incorporated within organic light-emitting devices, the lock-and-key exciplexes yield external quantum efficiencies of up to 5.4%, with potentially tunable emission color across the blue and green visible spectrum.

Supporting Information

Supporting information for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0039-3402059.


Supporting Information