Thermally stable nonaggregating pyrenylarenes for blue organic light-emitting devices

A new series of thermally stable blue light-emitting nonplanar pyrenylarenes having an amine donor and a nitrile acceptor group was prepared from a ketene-S,S-acetal under conventional heating and/or microwave irradiation. The photophysical, electrochemical, and optical behavior of donor-acceptor pyrenylarenes are demonstrated. The performance of blue light-emitting pyrenylarenes was investigated by fabricating a multilayer device with the device configuration of ITO/PEDOT:PSS (40 nm)/NPB (30 nm)/pyrenylarene (55 nm)/BCP (8 nm)/LiF (0.6 nm)/Al (200 nm), which exhibited low turn-on voltage (5 V) with luminance efficiency of 0.8 Cd/A with nonaggregation behavior in both solution and solid state.