NIR-Absorbing B,N-Heteroarene as Photosensitizer for High-Performance NIR-to-Blue Triplet-Triplet Annihilation Upconversion.

Triplet-triplet annihilation upconversion (TTA-UC) with near-infrared (NIR) photosensitizers is highly desirable for a variety of emerging applications. However, the development of NIR-to-blue TTA-UC with a large anti-Stokes shift is extremely challenging because of the energy loss during the intersystem crossing (ISC). Here, we develop the first NIR-absorbing B,N-heteroarene-based sensitizer (BNS) with multi-resonance thermally activated delayed fluorescence (MR-TADF) characters to achieve efficient NIR-to-blue TTA-UC. The small energy gap between the singlet and triplet excited states (0.14 eV) of BNS suppresses the ISC energy loss, and its long-delayed fluorescence lifetime (115 μs) contributes to efficient triplet energy transfer. As a result, the largest anti-Stokes shift (1.03 eV) among all heavy-atom-free NIR-activatable TTA-UC systems is obtained with a high TTA-UC quantum yield of 2.9% (upper limit 50%).