Double boron–oxygen-fused polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: skeletal editing and applications as organic optoelectronic materials

An efficient one-pot strategy for the facile synthesis of double boron–oxygen-fused polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (dBO-PAHs) with high regioselectivity and efficient skeletal editing is developed. The boron–oxygen-fused rings exhibit low aromaticity, endowing the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with high chemical and thermal stabilities. The incorporation of the boron–oxygen units enables the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to show single-component, low-temperature ultralong afterglow of up to 20 s. Moreover, the boron–oxygen-fused polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons can also serve as ideal n-type host materials for high-brightness and high-efficiency deep-blue OLEDs; compared to single host, devices using boron–oxygen-fused polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons-based co-hosts exhibit dramatically brightness and efficiency enhancements with significantly reduced efficiency roll-offs; device 9 demonstrates a high color-purity (Commission International de l’Eclairage CIE(y) = 0.104), and also achieves a record-high external quantum efficiency (28.0%) among Pt(II)-based deep-blue OLEDs with Commission International de l’Eclairage CIE(y) < 0.20; device 10 achieves a maximum brightnessof 27219 cd/m(2) with a peak external quantum efficiency of 27.8%, which representes the record-high maximum brightness among Pt(II)-based deep-blue OLEDs. This work demonstrates the great potential of the double boron–oxygen-fused polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons as ultralong afterglow and n-type host materials in optoelectronic applications.