Carborane-Based Optoelectronically Active Organic Molecules: Wide Band Gap Host Materials for Blue Phosphorescence

Abstract

Carborane-based host materials were prepared to fabricate deep blue phosphorescence organic light-emitting diodes (PHOLEDs), which constituted three distinctive geometrical structures stemming from the corresponding three different isomeric forms of carboranes, namely, ortho-, meta-, and para-carboranes. These materials consist of two carbazolyl phenyl (CzPh) groups as photoactive units on each side of the carborane carbons to be bis[4-(N-carbazolyl)phenyl]carboranes, o-Cb, m-Cb, and p-Cb. To elaborate on the role of the carboranes, comparative analogous benzene series (o-Bz, m-Bz, and p-Bz) were prepared, and their photophysical properties were compared to show that advantageous photophysical properties were originated from the carborane structures: high triplet energy. Unlike m-Bz and p-Bz, carborane-based m-Cb and p-Cb showed an unconjugated nature between two CzPh units, which is essential for the blue phosphorescent materials. Also, the carborane hosts showed high glass transition temperatures (T(g)) of 132 and 164 °C for m-Cb and p-Cb, respectively. Albeit p-Cb exhibited slightly lower hole mobility when compared to p-Bz, it still lies at the high end hole mobility with a value of 1.1 × 10(-3) cm(2)/(V s) at an electric field of 5 × 10(5) V/cm. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations revealed that triplet wave functions were effectively confined and mostly located at either side of the carbazolyl units for m-Cb and p-Cb. Low-temperature PL spectra indeed provided unequivocal data with higher triplet energy (T(1)) of 3.1 eV for both m-Cb and p-Cb. p-Cb was successfully used as a host in deep blue PHOLEDs to provide a high external quantum efficiency of 15.3% and commission internationale de l'elcairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.15, 0.24).

C,C′-Bis(benzodiazaborolyl)dicarba-closo-dodecaboranes: Synthesis, structures, photophysics and electrochemistry

“…4,7,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] Due to similarities in their sizes, the para-carborane motif -CB 10 H 10 C-has been compared with the para-phenylene spacer 1,4-C 6 H 4 -in donor-acceptor molecules. There, however, the carborane behaved as an effective insulator, whereas the phenylene-moiety is well known as an electron-conducting conjugated -system.…”

Substituent Effects on the Fluorescence Properties of ortho‐Carbor­anes: Unusual Emission Behaviour in C‐(2′‐Pyridyl)‐ortho‐carboranes

“…Such low-energy emissions have been reported in other diaryl-ortho-carboranes and arise from charge transfer involving both the ring and the carborane cluster. [9,10,13,15,16,18,20,[22][23][24][25][26] The solid-state emission of 1,2-diphenylortho-carborane 16 here is expected as many derivatives containing the diphenyl-ortho-carborane unit emit in the solid state. …”

“…[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] The meta-or para-carborane cluster merely plays roles as a spectator, a spacer or an inductively electron-withdrawing group in these molecules or polymers. There are, however, rare exceptions where the clusters are actively involved in the excited states of bis(benzodiazaborolyl)-meta-and -para-carboranes.…”

“…Photoexcitation of such dyads induced a charge transfer from an organic scaffold to the carborane cluster, which either led to luminescence quenching or to charge-transfer (CT) emissions or both -depending on the solvents used and whether the materials were investigated as solids. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] Dual fluorescence with CT and local transitions has been observed in some orthocarboranes. [12,13,[15][16][17][18][19][20]28] The ortho-carborane unit plays a role similar to meta-and para-carborane clusters in the photophysical process of a compound if there is a stronger electron acceptor than the cluster in these systems, [5,6,29,30] and if the ortho-carborane group is connected to a donor at one or more boron cluster atoms.…”

“…[33] Also other highly luminescent metal complexes have been reported with the pyridylcarborane unit present. [46] Given that there have been many articles on the observed luminescence of 1-monoalkyl-, 1-monoaryl-and 1,2-diaryl-ortho-carborane derivatives, [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] by contrast 1-monomethyl-ortho-carborane 4, 1-monophenyl-ortho-carborane 7 and 1,2-diphenyl-ortho-carborane 16 were quoted to be non-emissive. [20,30] …”