Achievement of High-Level Reverse Intersystem Crossing in Rubrene-Doped Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

Using the fingerprint magneto-electroluminescence trace, we observe a fascinating high-level reverse intersystem crossing (HL-RISC) in rubrene-doped organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). This HL-RISC is achieved from high-lying triplet states (T_2,rub) transferred from host triplet states by the Dexter energy transfer to the lowest singlet states (S_1,rub) in rubrene. Although HL-RISC decreases with bias current, it increases with lowering temperature. This is contrary to the temperature-dependent RISC from conventional thermally activated delayed fluorescence, because HL-RISC is an exothermic process instead. Moreover, owing to the competition of exciton energy transfer with direct charge trap, HL-RISC changes nonmonotonically with the dopant concentration and increases luminous efficiency to a maximum at 10% of rubrene, which is about ten times greater than that from the pure-rubrene device. Additionally, the HL-RISC process is not observed in bare rubrene-doped films because of the absence of T_2,rub. Our findings pave the way for designing highly efficient orange fluorescent OLEDs.