Highly efficient organic light-emitting diodes are in urgent demand in applications of new generation full-color displays and solid-state lighting sources. The limitation of device performance is greatly affected by extrinsic and intrinsic elements of the light out-coupling process. By elaborately designing emitters as sticklike molecules, horizontal orientation ratios in the range of 86–93% were realized to intrinsically increase the out-coupling factor of electroluminescence devices. These elongated compounds are inclined to lie parallel to substrate in vacuum-deposited thin solid films and regularize their transition dipole moments in a major degree. As consequences of such desirable molecule arrangement, remarkable external quantum efficiencies near 21% for pure blue devices, close to 30% for sky-blue devices, and over 35% for greenish blue devices were respectively achieved. A compatible strategy on devising high-performance emitters for organic electroluminescence is advocated herein.

A series of TADF emitters composed of pyrimidine/acridine moieties are developed. The optimized device realized its highest power efficiency of 62 lm W−1, a high external quantum efficiency of 25%, and a low turn-on voltage of 2.8 V with light-blue emission.