Recent progress in carbazole-based small-molecule single-component organic room-temperature phosphorescence

Abstract

Pure organic room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) luminophores have drawn great attention due to their unique photoelectronic properties and potential applications. Based on the intrinsic triplet exciton population capacity of carbazole, significant progress has been made in exploiting carbazole-based organic phosphors. As prospective candidates, carbazole-based integration scaffolds exhibiting merits of modulated lifetime, tunable luminous color, facile preparation and processing, remarkable stability and biocompatibility, and high cost-effectiveness have been investigated. Herein, the recent remarkable achievements regarding single-component carbazole-based pure organic RTP materials are outlined, which are classified into three categories according to the molecular structure characteristics, including donor/acceptor-attached conjugated molecules, sp³C-modulated nonconjugated molecules, and n&π units composited molecules. Based on collating diverse molecular design strategies of collected carbazole-based RTP luminophores, this work systematically demonstrates the emission mechanisms and phosphorescence properties, establishes structure-property relationships, and the on-demand optimization strategies for tailoring optical performances to fulfill the requirements of functional applications are presented concurrently. Furthermore, the influences of the carbazole isomer impurity exerted on the RTP behaviors are summed up briefly as well. This overview is intended to provide guidelines for developing high-performance single-component organic RTP materials and propose perspectives for further broadening practical applications.