About this Research Topic

Background

Since Tang and Slyke developed the first organic light-emitting diode (OLED) in 1987, OLEDs have been enormously studied for display technology in real life. This is because the OLED has vast advantages, such as being lightweight, wide viewing angle, fast response time, facile chemical tunability of emitting molecules, low energy consumption, compatibility with flexible plastic substrates, and form factors for various displays. At the same time, pure organic materials play a very important role in OLEDs as they hugely impact luminescent properties. In recent years, the 3rd and 4th generations of OLED showed significant progress in device efficiency and lifetime. However, despite the many advantages of OLEDs, the developed material’s emission spectra often show broad bandwidths, which are extremely detrimental to achieving high color purity for future high-end display electronics such as high-definition TV and ultra-high-definition TV (UHDTV).

In 2012, the International Telecommunication Union announced a new color gamut standard of broadcast service television (BT 2020) for UHDTV. To satisfy the wide-color gamut standard of BT 2020, monochromatic red (R), green (G), and blue (B) emissions require a small full width at half-maximum, which is an important property for improving color purity. Thus, the OLED emitters with narrowband R–G–B emissions are of great significance. Recently the boron-based emitters showed narrowband emission with high color purity in the full-color region gamut. Importantly the conventional BODIPY type and multi resonant (MR) narrowband emitters showed tremendous color purity in OLED applications. However, from a materials point of view, it is still in development for real BT2020 requirements, which will require real OLED displays. Furthermore, boron-based emitters can have high rigidity and good stability also which are again highly important for OLED display. In the case of the BODIPY type, high color purity is achieved but LUMO is deepened which is a little hard to fabricate the OLEDs. Whereas MR type emitters can have the best alternative for high color purity and better OLED performances. Based on the many advantages, boron-based MR type emitters would be best for OLED displays in near future. This Research Topic aims to pave the way for researchers to address the development of the high color purity boron-based emitters for OLED displays. The ultimate goal would be for a new concept or new molecular designs with boron atoms to be applied to real OLED applications.

We welcome Original Research, Review, Mini Review and Perspective articles on themes including, but not limited to:
• High photoluminescence materials
• Boron based emitters
• New molecular designs for high color purity materials
• Narrowband emitters
• Thermally activated delayed fluorescence materials
• Multi-resonance emitters
• Efficient OLED displays

Keywords: Boron based emissive materials, TADF/MR-TADF emitters, High color purity emitters, OLEDs

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