Blue electroluminescent materials based on phenylanthracene-substituted fluorene derivatives for organic light-emitting diodes

•We synthesized blue fluorescent materials based on anthracene–fluorene hybrid.•These materials have the good potentials for efficient blue OLEDs as the emitters.•A white OLED using one of these materials as blue emitter was demonstrated.

Two phenylanthracene-substituted fluorene derivatives, 10-(9,9′-dimethyl-2-(10-phenylanthracen-9-yl)-9H-fluoren-7-yl)-phenylanthracene (1) and 2′,7′-di-(10-phenylanthracen-9-yl)-9,9′-spirobi[9H-fluorene] (2) have been designed, synthesized, and characterized. A device using compound 1 as an emitting material exhibited luminous efficiency, power efficiency, external quantum efficiency and CIE coordinates of 3.37 cd/A, 1.50 lm/W, 1.87% at 20 mA/cm2 and (0.18, 0.25) at 7 V, respectively. Furthermore, by exploiting this efficient blue fluorescent material as a blue emitting material with the combination of red phosphorescent bis(2-phenylquinoline)acetylacetonate [(pq)2Ir(acac)], an efficient white OLED (WOLED) with a external quantum efficiency of 1.70%, luminous efficiency of 1.38 cd/A, power efficiency of 0.94 lm/W at 20 mA/cm2 and the color coordinates of (0.33, 0.36) at 14 V is demonstrated.

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