Molecular orientation of a new anthracene derivative for highly-efficient blue fluorescence OLEDs

•We fabricated non-doped blue fluorescent OLEDs with a structure of ITO/TAPC/BDNPA/Bphen/LiF/Al and ITO/TAPC/BDNA/Bphen/LiF/Al.•BDNPA–OLEDs showed excellent current efficiency of 5.21 cd/A.•Molecular orientation using 2D-GIXD analysis in the synthesized small-molecule emitters can affect the device performance.

A new anthracene derivative of 9,10-bis(2,5-dimethyl-4-(naphthalen-2-yl)phenyl)-2,3-diphenylanthracene (BDNPA) was designed and synthesized as a non-doped blue emitter in organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). BDNPA has highly rigid structure and thermal stability with decomposition temperature (corresponding to 5% weight loss) of 490 °C, because p-naphthyl xylene groups in 9,10-positions were highly twisted to anthracene core due to steric hindrance of xylene groups, and because the 2,3-diphenyl groups were also twisted about 45–49° to anthracene. OLEDs with BDNPA non-doped emitter showed high efficiency of 5.21 cd/A due to the carrier mobility with well-aligned π-stacking structure toward out-of-plane by the face-on orientation by grazing incidence X-ray diffraction.

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