Rational design of anthracene-based deep-blue emissive materials for highly efficient deep-blue organic light-emitting diodes with CIEy ≤ 0.05

By using molecular twisting 2,2'-dimethylbiphenyl core and different side group substitutions, three anthracene-based deep blue emitters, 10,10'-(2,2'-dimethyl-[1,1'-biphenyl]-4,4'-diyl)bis(9-phenylanthracene) (PABP), 10,10'-(2, 2'-dimethyl-[1,1'-biphenyl]-4,4'-diyl)bis(9-(naphthalen-2-yl)anthracene) (beta NABP) and 10,10'-(2,2'-dimethyl-[1,1'-biphenyl]-4,4'-diyl)bis(9-(naphthalen-1-yl)anthracene) (alpha NABP), were effectively developed. These three twisted anthracene derivatives exhibited strong deep blue photoluminescence which remarkably surpassed the standard blue for the high-definition television (HDTV). Particularly, PABP with high hole mobility of 1.67 x 10(-5) cm(2) V-1 s(-)(1) delivered a high OLED device performance with external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 4.04% and deep blue emission colour with CIE coordinates of (0.15, 0.05).