Tellurophene‐Induced Triplet–Singlet Spin‐Flip Acceleration: An Advanced Design for Narrowband Organoboron Emitters with Fast Reverse Intersystem Crossing
Organoboron narrowband emitters leveraging the multi-resonance (MR) effect have emerged as key material components for wide-color-gamut organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) that offer high efficiency and excellent color reproducibility. However, conventional MR-type thermally activated delayed fluorescence (MR-TADF) emitters suffer from severe efficiency roll-off in OLEDs operated at high brightness due to slow reverse intersystem crossing (RISC). Here, we report the first MR-TADF emitters incorporating tellurium (Te)-the heaviest stable chalcogen-to accelerate the spin-flip RISC process through enhanced spin-orbit coupling. Our design strategy involves tethering dibenzo[b,d]tellurophene as a RISC booster to a representative MR skeleton, thereby promoting efficient delayed fluorescence. The resulting Te-containing MR-TADF emitters exhibit fast RISC rates of up to 2.8 × 10<sup>6</sup> s<sup>-1</sup> and narrow emission bandwidths of 23-25 nm in solution. OLEDs fabricated with these emitters achieve exceptional high external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) of up to 35.3%, with significantly reduced efficiency roll-off, maintaining EQEs of 32.2% and 25.4% even at very high brightness levels of 10<sup>3</sup> and 10<sup>4</sup> cd m<sup>-2</sup>, respectively. This study demonstrates the potential of Te-containing MR-TADF systems for next-generation OLEDs and highlights their functional impact on device performance.
Authors
- Takuma Yasuda (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3975-1552)
- Jun hyeon Lee
- Peiyuan Yang
- Kotone Urano
Institutions
- Kyushu University (JP)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Angewandte Chemie International Edition
- Published
- 2025-12-26
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202524098
- Primary Topic
- Organic Light-Emitting Diodes Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
- Hoso Bunka Foundation
- Iketani Science and Technology Foundation
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- Research Institute for Information Technology, Kyushu University
- Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology