Efficient non-doped blue fluorescent OLEDs based on bipolar phenanthroimidazole-triphenylamine derivatives

Blue organic emissive materials are still the most important bottlenecks for the development of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). To enrich the material library, herin, three bipolar phenanthroimidazole derivatives, namely MePPIM-TPA, ClPPIM- TPA and BuPPIM-TPA, are synthesized using triphenylamine as electron-donor and phenanthroimidazole as the electron-acceptor. The photophysical, thermal and electrochemical properties of three compounds are investigated with high decomposition temperature up to 350 °C, and strong blue emission. Single-carrier devices are fabricated to show that three compounds have good bipolar carrier transport characteristic. The non-doped fluorescent OLEDs devices using three compounds as emitting layers are fabricated among which the devices based on MePPIM-TPA achieved the maximum luminance of 1743 cd/m2, the maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 2.99% which is relatively comparable to commonly used blue emitters. •Three bipolar phenanthroimidazole-triphenylamine derivatives were synthesized.•They exhibited high thermal stability and bipolar carrier transport characteristic.•The non-doped OLEDs devices were fabricated, showing blue emission with acceptable performance.