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Regio- and conformational isomerization critical to design of efficient thermally-activated delayed fluorescence emitters

Etherington, Marc K.; Franchello, Flavio; Gibson, Jamie; Northey, Thomas; Santos, Jose; Ward, Jonathan S.; Higginbotham, Heather F.; Data, Przemyslaw; Kurowska, Aleksandra; Dos Santos, Paloma Lays; Graves, David R.; Batsanov, Andrei S.; Dias, Fernando B.; Bryce, Martin R.; Penfold, Thomas J.; Monkman, Andrew P.

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Authors

Marc K. Etherington

Flavio Franchello

Jamie Gibson

Thomas Northey

Jose Santos

Jonathan S. Ward

Heather F. Higginbotham

Przemyslaw Data

Aleksandra Kurowska

Paloma Lays Dos Santos

David R. Graves

Andrei S. Batsanov

Martin R. Bryce

Thomas J. Penfold



Abstract

Regio- and conformational isomerization are fundamental in chemistry, with profound effects upon physical properties, however their role in excited state properties is less developed. Here two regioisomers of bis(10H-phenothiazin-10-yl)dibenzo[b,d]thiophene-S,S-dioxide, a donor–acceptor–donor (D–A–D) thermally-activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitter, are studied. 2,8-bis(10H-phenothiazin-10-yl)dibenzo[b,d]thiophene-S,S-dioxide exhibits only one quasi-equatorial conformer on both donor sites, with charge-transfer (CT) emission close to the local triplet state leading to efficient TADF via spin-vibronic coupling. However, 3,7-bis(10H-phenothiazin-10-yl)dibenzo[b,d]thiophene-S,S-dioxide displays both a quasi-equatorial CT state and a higher-energy quasi-axial CT state. No TADF is observed in the quasi-axial CT emission. These two CT states link directly to the two folded conformers of phenothiazine. The presence of the low-lying local triplet state of the axial conformer also means that this quasi-axial CT is an effective loss pathway both photophysically and in devices. Importantly, donors or acceptors with more than one conformer have negative repercussions for TADF in organic light-emitting diodes.

Citation

Etherington, M. K., Franchello, F., Gibson, J., Northey, T., Santos, J., Ward, J. S., …Monkman, A. P. (2017). Regio- and conformational isomerization critical to design of efficient thermally-activated delayed fluorescence emitters. Nature Communications, 8, Article 14987. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14987

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 19, 2017
Online Publication Date Apr 13, 2017
Publication Date Apr 13, 2017
Deposit Date Apr 13, 2017
Publicly Available Date Apr 18, 2017
Journal Nature Communications
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 8
Article Number 14987
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14987
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1381105

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/






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