Small molecular hole-transporting and emitting materials for hole-only green organic light-emitting devices

• Fully solution-processed green fluorescent small-molecules OLEDs were fabricated.
• The OLEDs were simple-structured using as-synthesized compounds as hole-transporting and emitting layer.
• The hole-only OLEDs showed higher luminance (2010 cd m−2).

Three small molecular hole-transporting and emitting materials with naphthalene bridged triphenylamine or carbazole were synthesized. These compounds exhibited high absolute fluorescence quantum yields (70–88%) at the green light region (540–555 nm), suitable highest occupied molecular orbital levels (−5.26 ∼ −5.34 eV) and good hole mobilities (∼10−4 cm2 V−1 s−1). The hole-only organic light emitting diodes with as-synthesized hole-transporting and emitting materials showed a tune-on voltage and a maximum brightness of 2.6 V and 2010 cd m−2, respectively. Three stages of voltage-dependent current were observed, which coincide with the characteristic of Ohmic current, Fowler-Nordheim current and space charge limited current. With analysis of above models, overlarge Fowler-Nordheim current and space charge limited current contribute to the low efficiency of the device. All these results indicated that the high hole mobility showed the negative effect on the device efficiency, especially at high operation voltage.

The luminous mechanism and luminous photograph of the OLED; Molecular structure of as-synthesized HT-EMs.Figure optionsDownload as PowerPoint slide