Highly thermal stable and efficient carbazole/pyridine/dibenzothiophene based bipolar host material for red phosphorescent light-emitting diodes

In this work, we designed and synthesized two bipolar host materials, DBTPC1 and DBTPC2 through different linkage ways between carbazole, pyridine and dibenzothiophene. The photophysical properties and thermal properties of these hosts were systematically investigated. Their rigid molecular structures result in high glass transition temperatures, contributing to excellent thermal stability of molecules. Employing DBTPC1 and DBTPC2 as hosts, red phosphorescent organic light-emitting devices (PHOLEDs) with Ir(piq)2acac as an emitter display maximum external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) of 18.8 and 13.2%, respectively. The experimental results reveal that DBTPC1 shows better performance than commercial host 4,4’-bis(carbazol-9-yl)biphenyl (CBP), thus, would be a promising host material for practical application in red PHOLEDs and for the future exploration in multi-color PHOLEDs.