Fluorinated poly(N-vinylcarbazole) host for triplet energy confinement on phosphorescent emitter in organic light-emitting diodes

摘要

Fluorinated carbazoles as host materials have been investigated for highly efficient organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). By molecular orbital calculations, we found that fluorinations at position 2, 4, 5 and 7 of carbazole ring were effective for widening HOMO-LUMO energy gap. The energy gaps of our synthesized 2,7-difluorocarbazole (F2-Cz) and 2,4,5,7-tetrafluorocarbazole (F4-Cz), were estimated to be 3.71 eV and 3.87 eV by the absorption spectra, respectively. These energy gaps were higher than that of the non-substituted carbazole (Cz, 3.59 eV). We synthesized poly(N-vinyl-2,7-difluorocarbazole) (F2-PVK) and poly(N-vinyl-2,4,5,7-tetrafluorocarbazole) (F4-PVK) as solution processable polymer host materials. However, the F4-PVK was found to be an unsolved polymer. The F2-PVK could be compared with non substituted poly(N-vinylcarbazole) (PVK) in OLEDs. The emission layer (EML) contained iridium(III) bis [(4,6-di-fluorophenyl)-pyridinato-N,C2'] picolinate (FIrpic) as a blue phosphorescent dopant, and iridium(III) bis [2-(9,9-dihexylfluorenyl)-1-pyridine] acetylacetonate as a yellow dopant. The white OLED with the F2-PVK showed 1.4 times higher luminous current efficiency (24 cd/A) than the PVK (17 cd/A). These data show that the excitation energy is confined on dopants by using fluorinated polymer host material with higher T_1 corresponding to wider HOMO-LUMO energy gap.