Activated Singlet Fission Dictated by Anti-Kasha Property in a Rylene Imide Dye

A key challenge in the search of new materials capable of singlet fission (SF) arises from the primary energy conservation criterion, i.e., the energy of the triplet exciton has to be half that of the singlet (E(S₁) ≥ 2E(T₁)), which excludes most photostable organic materials from consideration and confines the design strategy to materials with low energy triplet states. One potential way to overcome this energy requirement and improve the triplet energy is to enable a SF channel from higher energy ("hot") excitonic states (S) in a process called activated SF. Herein, we demonstrate that efficient activated SF is achieved in a rylene imide-based derivative acenaphth[l, 2-a]acenaphthylene diimide (AADI). This process is enabled by an increase in the energy gap to greater than 1.0 eV between the S₃ and S₁ states due to the incorporation of an antiaromatic pentalene unit, which leads to the emergence of anti-Kasha properties in the isolated molecule. Transient spectroscopy studies show that AADI undergoes ultrafast SF from higher singlet excited states in thin film, with excitation wavelength-dependent SF yields. The SF yield of ∼200% is observed upon higher energy excitation, and long-lived free triplets persist on the μs time scale suggesting that AADI can be used in SF-enhanced devices. Our results suggest that enlarging the S-S₁ energy gap is an effective way to turn on the activated SF channel and shed light on the development of novel, stable SF materials with high triplet energies.