Improving Electron Mobility of Tetraphenylethene-Based AIEgens to Fabricate Nondoped Organic Light-Emitting Diodes with Remarkably High Luminance and Efficiency

Robust light-emitting materials with strong solid-state fluorescence as well as fast and balanced carrier transporting ability are crucial to achieve high-performance organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). In this contribution, two linear tetraphenylethene (TPE) derivatives (TPE-TPAPBI and TPE-DPBI) that are functionalized with hole-transporting triphenylamine and/or electron-transporting 1,2-diphenyl-1H-benzimidazole groups are synthesized and fully characterized. Both TPE-TPAPBI and TPE-DPBI have aggregation-induced emission attributes and excellent photoluminescence quantum yields approaching 100% in vacuum deposited films. They also possess good thermal property, giving high decomposition temperatures (480 and 483 °C) and glass-transition temperatures (141 and 157 °C). TPE-TPAPBI and TPE-DPBI present high electron mobilities of 1.80 × 10(-5) and 1.30 × 10(-4) cm(2) V (-1) s(-1), respectively, at an electric field of 3.6 × 10(5) V cm(-1), which are comparable or even superior to that of 1,3,5-tri(1-phenylbenzimidazol-2-yl)benzene. The nondoped OLED device employing TPE-TPAPBI as active layer performs outstandingly, affording ultrahigh luminance of 125 300 cd m(-2), and excellent maximum external quantum, power and current efficiencies of 5.8%, 14.6 lm W(-1), and 16.8 cd A(-1), respectively, with very small roll-offs, demonstrating that TPE-TPAPBI is a highly promising luminescent material for nondoped OLEDs.