Electrogenerated chemiluminescence of donor-acceptor molecules with thermally activated delayed fluorescence.

ABSTRACT

The electrochemistry and electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) of four kinds of electron donor-acceptor molecules exhibiting thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) is presented. TADF molecules can harvest light energy from the lowest triplet state by spin up-conversion to the lowest singlet state because of small energy gap between these states. Intense green to red ECL is emitted from the TADF molecules by applying a square-wave voltage. Remarkably, it is shown that the efficiency of ECL from one of the TADF molecule could reach about 50%, which is comparable to its photoluminescence quantum yield.