Germanium-integrated exciplex host for high-performance narrowband OLEDs with mitigated efficiency roll-off
Abstract Multi-resonance thermally activated delayed fluorescence (MR-TADF) materials open a heavy-metal-free avenue toward highly efficient, narrowband organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). However, their slow reverse intersystem crossing (RISC) kinetics lead to severe efficiency roll-off at practical driving currents, and existing strategies to improve RISC often require emitter-specific chemical modifications. Here we demonstrate a general strategy by integrating heavy-atom germanium into hole-transporting/electron-transporting hosts to construct an exciplex system that accelerates spin-flip dynamics. This design enhances RISC rates in diverse MR-TADF emitters via Förster resonance energy transfer without altering their electronic structure. The resulting blue and green OLEDs achieve external quantum efficiencies exceeding 40% with markedly suppressed efficiency roll-off relative to silicon- and carbon-based counterparts. Notably, the green device exhibits a half-lifetime of 241 h at an initial luminance of 1000 cd m −2 . This general host-guest strategy advances MR-TADF systems toward practical high-performance displays.
Authors
- Manli Huang
- siyuan he (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0064-7771)
- Chuluo Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9337-3460)
- Zhanxiang Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8264-0460)
- Jiahui Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5726-159X)
- Yu Gu
- Xue Zhou
- Jingsheng Miao
- Xu Zhang
- Cheng Zhong
Institutions
- Shenzhen University (CN)
- Wuhan University (CN)
- Yangtze Optical Electronic (China) (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2026-08-20
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-76914-5
- Primary Topic
- Organic Light-Emitting Diodes Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Shenzhen University