Realization of Thermally Stimulated Delay Phosphorescence in Arylgold(III) Complexes and Efficient Gold(III) Based Blue-Emitting Organic Light-Emitting Devices

To address and overcome the difficulties associated with the increased reactivity and susceptibility of blue emitters to deactivation pathways arising from the high-lying triplet excited states, we have successfully demonstrated an innovative strategy of harvesting triplet emission via the “thermally stimulated delayed phosphorescence” mechanism, where thermal up-conversion of excitons from the lower-energy triplet excited states (T₁) to higher-energy triplet excited states (T₁′) are observed to generate blue emission. The lower-lying T₁ excited state could serve as a mediator to populate the emissive T₁′ state by up-conversion via reverse internal conversion, which could enhance the photoluminescence quantum yield by over 20-folds. Organic light-emitting devices with respectable external quantum efficiencies of up to 7.7% and sky-blue emission with CIE coordinates of (0.17, 0.37) have been realized. The operational stability for the device based on complex 1 has also been explored, and the device is found to show fairly respectable lifetime. This work opens up a new avenue to the design and synthesis of blue phosphorescent emitters.