The Role of Charge Balance and Excited State Levels on Device Performance of Exciplex-based Phosphorescent Organic Light Emitting Diodes

The design of novel exciplex-forming co-host materials provides new opportunities to achieve high device performance of organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), including high efficiency, low driving voltage and low efficiency roll-off. Here, we report a comprehensive study of exciplex-forming co-host system in OLEDs including the change of co-host materials, mixing composition of exciplex in the device to improve the performance. We investigate various exciplex systems using 5-(3–4,6-diphenyl-1,3,5-triazin-2-yl)phenyl-3,9-diphenyl-9H-carbazole, 5-(3–4,6-diphenyl-1,3,5-triazin-2-yl)phenyl)-9-phenyl-9H-3,9′-bicarbazole, and 2-(3-(6,9-diphenyl-9H-carbazol-4-yl)phenyl)-4-phenylbenzo[4,5]thieno[3,2-d]pyrimidine, as electron transporting (ET: electron acceptor) hosts and 9,9′-dipenyl-9H, 9′H-3,3′-bicarbazole and 9-([1,1′-biphenyl]-4-yl)-9′-phenyl-9H,9′H-3,3′-bicarbazole as hole transporting (HT: electron donor) hosts. As a result, a very high current efficiency of 105.1 cd/A at 10(3) cd/m(2) and an extremely long device lifetime of 739 hrs (t(95): time after 5% decrease of luminance) are achieved which is one of the best performance in OLEDs. Systematic approach, controlling mixing ratio of HT to ET host materials is suggested to select the component of two host system using energy band matching and charge balance optimization method. Furthermore, our analysis on exciton stability also reveal that lifetime of OLEDs have close relationship with two parameters; singlet energy level difference of HT and ET host and difference of singlet and triplet energy level in exciplex.