Modulation of p-type units in tripodal bipolar hosts towards highly efficient red phosphorescent OLEDs

Abstract Three novel tripodal bipolar compounds (CNTPA-CZ, CNTPA-PXZ and CNTPA-PTZ) were designed and synthesized, where three functional groups were attached to 1,3,5-positions of the central benzene ring, respectively. In these three compounds, carbazole/phenoxazine/phenothiazine (CZ/PXZ/PTZ) and benzonitrile were applied as electron-donating and electron-withdrawing groups, respectively, to achieve bipolar transport functionality, which was confirmed by the hole-only and electron-only device results. Due to the efficient energy transfer from these compounds to the dopant (Ir(MDQ) 2 (acac)), the red phosphorescent OLEDs demonstrated high device performance with maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) over 20%. Particularly, the red OLED hosted by CNTPA-PTZ achieved a maximum efficiency of 42.5 cd/A, 44.3 lm/w and 23.4% with the EQE roll-off ratio of 3.4% from the peak value to that at a brightness of 500 cd/m 2 .