The development of a new approach toward lanthanide-based OLED fabrication: new host materials for Tb-based emitters

To develop the recently proposed approach toward host selection for lanthanide-based emitters, four phosphine oxides PO = PO1-PO4 were investigated which are able to both increase the electron mobility and to sensitize terbium luminescence. New highly soluble and brightly luminescent terbium complexes TbCl3(PO)·H2O and Tb(pobz)3(PO)·(CH3)2CO (pobz- = phenoxybenzoate) with a quantum yield of up to 100% were synthesized and thoroughly characterized. To study the electroluminescence properties of these materials, a series of solution-processed OLED devices were fabricated and their heterostructures were selected based on the HOMO and LUMO energies of PO1-PO4, which were carefully assessed by the combination of DFT and TDDFT methods. Thus, the effectiveness of the proposed approach was proved, and the influence of the anionic ligand was shown. The maximum OLED luminance reached 75 Cd m-2, which is a high value for solution-processed OLEDs based on terbium complexes.