Excited State Intramolecular Proton Transfer Dynamics for Triplet Harvesting in Organic Molecules

Thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) has shown great potential as a mechanism for harvesting low-lying triplet excited states in organic molecules and is therefore of great interest in the context of organic electronics, especially organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Herein we study the mechanism for triplet harvesting in triquinolonobenzene (TQB), which instead of relying upon the well-established donor–acceptor (D-A) scheme uses excited-state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT). We demonstrate that upon photoexcitation into the lowest singlet excited state the proton is transferred within 20 fs, suggesting it plays little role in triplet harvesting, which occurs on the nano- to microsecond time scale. However, TQB exhibits multiple low-lying triplet states that are strongly coupled along this proton transfer coordinate. The majority of these states favor the structure prior to proton transfer (TQB-TA) and this means that the proton transfer dynamics (3TQB-TA → 1TQB-TB) plays a crucial role in triplet harvesting. This mechanism yields an energy gap in good agreement with that reported experimentally and is consistent with previous photophysical characterization. Finally, a discussion upon extending this understanding into a device context is also presented.