Long-lived spin-polarized intermolecular exciplex states in thermally activated delayed fluorescence-based organic light-emitting diodes

Spin-spin interactions in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) based on thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) are pivotal because radiative recombination is largely determined by triplet-to-singlet conversion, also called reverse intersystem crossing (RISC). To explore the underlying process, we apply a spin-resonance spectral hole-burning technique to probe electroluminescence. We find that the triplet exciplex states in OLEDs are highly spin-polarized and show that these states can be decoupled from the heterogeneous nuclear environment as a source of spin dephasing and can even be coherently manipulated on a spin-spin relaxation time scale T(2)* of 30 ns. Crucially, we obtain the characteristic triplet exciplex spin-lattice relaxation time T(1) in the range of 50 μs, which far exceeds the RISC time. We conclude that slow spin relaxation rather than RISC is an efficiency-limiting step for intermolecular donor:acceptor systems. Finding TADF emitters with faster spin relaxation will benefit this type of TADF OLEDs.