Construction of High Tg Bipolar Host Materials with Balanced Electron–Hole Mobility Based on 1,2,4-Thiadiazole for Phosphorescent Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

Abstract

A novel electron-transporting moiety, 1,2,4-thiadiazole, was first introduced to construct bipolar host molecules for phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (PhOLEDs). By incorporating 1,2,4-thiadiazole with typical hole-transporting carbazole moieties, a series of thiadiazole/carbazole hybrids, o-CzTHZ, m-CzTHZ, and p-CzTHZ, were synthesized. All the hybrids exhibit very high glass transition temperatures (Tg ≥ 167 °C) and show good thermal and morphological stability in films. Moreover, these host materials possess good bipolar charge transporting properties; electron and hole mobilities of these bipolar thiadiazole/carbazole hybrids can be tuned by simply adjusting the linkage modes between thiadiazole and carbazole moieties. The maximum external quantum efficiencies (ηEQE, max) in the green PhOLEDs with o-CzTHZ, m-CzTHZ, and p-CzTHZ as the hosts reached 26.1%, 24.0%, and 22.9%, respectively, and their EQE were still over 20% even at the high luminance of 10,000 cd/m2. This study demonstrates that 1,2,4-thiadiazole should be an excellent electron-transporting unit for bipolar phosphorescent hosts.