A terpyridine-modified chrysene derivative as an electron transporter to improve the lifetime in phosphorescent OLEDs

In this work, we designed and developed a terpyridine-modified chrysene derivative, abbreviated as B3TPyC , to be used as electron-transport layers (ETLs) toward the construction of highly stable phosphorescent OLEDs. A green phosphorescent OLED with a B3TPyC ETL exhibited a low turn-on voltage of 2.4 V at 1 cd m −2 and an external quantum efficiency of 17.5% at 1000 cd m −2 with a long operation lifetime at 50% of the initial luminance (LT 50 ) of over 258 h at current density 25 mA cm −2 (an initial luminance of approximately 12 000 cd m −2 ), which corresponds to a LT 50 of 19 000 h at 1000 cd m −2 . This is more than 1.5 times longer than the time of luminance decay provided by the phenylpyridine counterpart named B3PyPC . These results clearly show the potential and usefulness of terpyridine-based chrysene derivatives to be applied in high-performance OLEDs with high operational stability. A terpyridine-end-capped chrysene shows superior electron-transport ability with high operation stability in organic light-emitting devices. A green phosphorescent device exhibited a long operation lifetime of 19 000 h at 1000 cd m −2 .