Phenylcarbazole and phosphine oxide/sulfide hybrids as host materials for blue phosphors: effectively tuning the charge injection property without influencing the triplet energy

Abstract

Compared with red and green phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (PHOLEDs), efficient blue PHOLEDs are still scarce, because it is difficult for the host materials for blue phosphors to achieve a trade-off between a wide triplet energy and good charge injection properties. We theoretically studied a series of hybrid phosphine oxide/sulfide–phenylcarbazole host molecules (PO(S)PhCBZs) for blue phosphors through different linkage modes between phenylcarbazole (PhCBZ) and phosphine oxide/sulfide (PO/PS) moieties. The results indicate that the singlet excitons of all PO(S)–PhCBZs are delocalized over the entire molecule with intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) character and different linkage modes cause various degrees of ICT, which determines the injection abilities of carriers from neighboring layers following the order: PO–Phs (PO linked to the phenyl of PhCBZ) > para-POs (PO linked to the para-positions of PhCBZ) > meta-POs (PO linked to the meta-positions of PhCBZ). By contrast, the triplet excitons are confined to the carbazole unit for all PO(S)–PhCBZs. High triplet energies (E_T) are therefore kept up for all systems, except for para-POs showing a slight drop in E_T due to the delocalization of their triplet excitons to the phenyl moiety of PhCBZ. All hybrid PO(S)–PhCBZs, especially PO(s)–Phs, exhibit an enhancement in electron injection and triplet energy compared with the most widely used host material (N,N-dicarbazolyl-3,5-benzene) for blue PHOLEDs, and thereby have great potential for application in highly efficient light emitting diodes.