SBIR Phase I: Non-crystallizable charge transporting organic materials as OLED functional layers and thermally activated delayed fluorescence emitter-layer hosts

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是加速有机发光二极管（OLED）技术的商业化。对于彩色显示器（电视、手机、电脑、虚拟现实、手表等）而言，OLED在能耗、显示色彩空间、视角等方面优于所有现有技术。对于照明，OLED灯具使用非常低的能量，光线柔和，没有阴影，并且在建筑上灵活。OLED是未来的显示和照明技术。然而，成本和设备寿命短阻碍了商业化的发展。引入一种全新的OLED制造材料将使这一进步成为可能。该项目将利用一种新型的光电材料，用于组成OLED的纳米厚层，从而降低OLED的成本并提高性能。OLED层利用单组分小分子作为电荷传输和发光层。这些分子容易结晶，是发光分子的不良溶剂，导致发光效率降低和器件寿命缩短。创新之处在于，在所有三层中都使用了非晶态和不可结晶的设计分子的异构体混合物。这些分子经过化学设计，以满足优越OLED性能所需的所有光物理和电学特性。初步的器件制造和测试证实，这些新材料显著提高了标准发射器分子的发射效率和器件寿命。由于发射层中电荷重组的物理性质，只有一种技术有潜力将注入的电荷100%捕获为发射光：热激活延迟荧光（TADF）。使用TADF技术的oled具有很高的效率，但器件寿命非常短。该项目将把新的非晶化技术与TADF结合起来，设计和制造高效率和长寿命的OLED器件，以满足商业化要求。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to accelerate the commercialization of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology. For color displays (TV, cell phone, computer, virtual reality, watches, etc.) OLED is superior to all existing technologies in terms of energy usage, display color space, viewing angle, etc. For lighting, OLED fixtures use very low energy, the light is soft, casts no shadow, and is architecturally flexible. OLED is the display and lighting technology of the future. However cost and short device lifetime has retarded commercial advancement. The introduction of an entirely new class of materials for OLED manufacturing will enable this advancement. The proposed project will reduce OLED cost and improve performance by utilizing a new class of photoelectric materials for the nanometer thick layers that comprise an OLED. OLED layers utilize single-component small molecules for the charge transporting and light-emitting layers. These molecules tend to crystallize and are poor solvents for the emitting molecules leading to decreased light emission efficiency and shortened device lifetime. The innovation is using isomeric mixtures of designed molecules that are amorphous and non-crystallizable in all three layers. These molecules are chemically designed to meet all the required photophysical and electrical characteristics necessary for superior OLED performance. Preliminary device fabrication and testing has confirmed that these new materials dramatically improve both emission efficiency and device lifetime with the standard emitter molecules. Due to the physics of charge recombination in the emitter layer there is only one technology which has the potential to harvest 100% of the injected charge as emitted light: thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF). OLEDs using TADF technology have demonstrated high efficiency but with very short device lifetime. This project will couple the new non-crystallizable technology with TADF to design and fabricate OLED devices with both high efficiency and long life to meet commercialization requirements.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.