Research Trends of Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence Materials for Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

Abstract

s The development of highly efficient thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials is an active area of recent research in organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) since the first report by Chihaya Adachi in 2011. Traditional fluorescent materials can harvest only singlet excitons, leading to the theoretically highest external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 5% with considering about 20% light out-coupling efficiency in the device. On the other hand, TADF materials can harvest both singlet and triplet excitons through reverse intersystem crossing (RISC) from triplet to singlet excited states. It could provide 100% internal quantum efficiencies (IQE), resulting in comparable high EQE to traditional rare-metal complexes (phosphorescent materials). Thanks to a lot of efforts in this field, many highly efficient TADF materials have been developed. This review focused on recent molecular design concept and optoelectronic properties of TADF materials for high efficiency and long lifetime OLED application.