Lifting triplet energy and bipolar characteristics by limiting the rotation of the peripheral groups in host materials to achieve high‐efficiency blue OLED

Bipolar host materials with high triplet energy are of great significance for highly efficient blue organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). In this work, three donor-acceptor-donor (D-A-D) type host materials with identical non-rigid diphenylsulfone center but differing in rotation degree of peripheral amino substituted derivatives from rotating freely diphenylamine (SODP) to rotating partially iminodibenzyl (SOId) and rotating restricted carbazole (SOCz) were designed and synthesized. It was demonstrated that the triplet energy (ET ) level of the materials promoted by limiting the rotation degree of the peripheral groups, which was 2.72 eV for SODP, 2.73 eV for SOId and 2.78 eV for SOCz, respectively. Besides, the results of the single-carrier devices indicate SOCz possess better bipolar characteristic. Using FIrpic as guest emitter, the blue OLED with SOCz as host material exhibited superior device performance with a low turn-on voltage of 3.3 V, a maximum current efficiency (CE) of 30.1 cd A-1 , a maximum power efficiency (PE) of 32.2 lm W-1 , and a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 14.0%. This work provides a beneficial guideline for realizing promising host materials in efficient blue OLEDs.