Enhancing the Kinetic Stability and Lifetime of Organic Light-Emitting Diodes based on Bipolar Hosts by using Spiroconjugation

We examined how to enhance the lifetime of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) based on bipolar host molecules ET-HT, where ET and HT refer to electron- and hole-transporting units, respectively, by analyzing their thermodynamic and kinetic stabilities. Our DFT calculations reveal that the thermodynamic stability of ET-HT is determined by that of its anion, which is difficult to improve by chemical modifications of ET and HT. The kinetic stability of ET-HT can be enhanced by the spiroconjugation between ET and HT, which occurs when their π-frameworks are extended and have an orthogonal arrangement. Green OLED devices were fabricated by using ET-HTs with and without spiroconjugation, to find that the device with spiroconjugation has a lifetime that is approximately 6 times longer than the one without spiroconjugation.