Chiral sulfoximine-based TADF emitter for circularly polarized luminescence and highly efficient OLEDs

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) have their performance limited by the number of emissive singlet states created upon charge recombination (25%). Recently, a novel strategy has been proposed, based on thermally activated up-conversion of triplet to singlet states, yielding delayed fluorescence (TADF), which greatly enhances electroluminescence. The energy barrier for this reverse intersystem crossing mechanism is proportional to the exchange energy (ΔEST ) between the singlet and triplet states; therefore, materials with intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) states, where it is known that the exchange energy is small, are perfect candidates. However, here it is shown that triplet states can be harvested with 100% efficiency via TADF, even in materials with ΔEST of more than 20 kT (where k is the Boltzmann constant and T is the temperature) at room temperature. The key role played by lone pair electrons in achieving this high efficiency in a series of ICT molecules is elucidated. The results show the complex photophysics of efficient TADF materials and give clear guidelines for designing new emitters.

This review summarizes the recent advances in CP-OLEDs based on chiral conjugated polymers, chiral metal complexes, and chiral simple organic molecules. Since the first attempt that was made to obtain direct circularly polarized (CP) light from OLEDs by Meijer et al. in 1997, considerable efforts have been devoted to the development of circularly polarized organic light-emitting diodes (CP-OLEDs), particularly in the recent years. Circularly polarized electroluminescence (CPEL) based on OLEDs has attracted increasing interest for its efficient ability to generate CP light directly and wide potential applications in 3D displays, optical data storage, and optical spintronics. In this review, we systematically summarize the recent progress in chiral emitter based OLEDs with CPEL properties including CPEL based on chiral conjugated polymers, CPEL based on chiral metal complexes, and CPEL based on chiral simple organic molecules, especially chiral thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) molecules. We believe that this review will provide a promising perspective of chiral emitter based OLEDs with CPEL properties for a broad range of scientists in different disciplinary areas and attract a growing number of researchers to this fast-growing research field.