Color tunable and very-high color rendering white organic light-emitting diodes employing a heavy-metal-free single emitter

Abstract The development of white organic light-emitting diodes (WOLEDs) holds great promise for the production of high-color-quality lighting sources. High quantum efficiencies for the conversion of electrical energy to light have been realized. The color stability and color-rendering index (CRI) become bottleneck for the commercial application of WOLEDs. Here, we employed a metal-free dimerization of 1‑phenyl‑3,5‑diamine‑triazine (DPDT) as a single non-doped emitter in WOLEDs, that exhibits mild efficiency roll-off while maintaining CRI of 92. This high CRI is attributable to the DPDT with efficient monomer and excimer emission, which together emit a relatively wide spectrum that nearly covers the entire range of visible light. The formation of the excimer can make the emission color of single-emitter based WOLEDs tunable with the applied bias over a wide range from blue to pure white.