Utilizing anthracene- and triphenylamine-based blue fluorescent emitters with D–π–A structures in integrated organic light-emitting and ultraviolet photodetector devices

The design of materials for devices that integrate organic light-emitting diode and ultraviolet organic photodetectors (OLED-UVOPDs) faces a grand challenge. In this study, we synthesized two blue fluorescent emitters utilizing triphenylamine (TPA) and 4-methyl- N -phenyl- N -( p -tolyl)-aniline (MeTPA) units as donors, benzonitrile as an acceptor, and anthracene (AN) as a bridge, namely TPA-AN and 2mTPA-AN. Notably, both emitters demonstrated high absolute fluorescence quantum yields of 51.1% for TPA-AN and 46.6% for 2mTPA-AN with emission peaks at 474 and 488 nm, respectively. Single-carrier devices indicated favorable electron mobilities of 3.96 × 10 −5 cm 2 V −1 s −1 for TPA-AN and 6.63 × 10 −7 cm 2 V −1 s −1 for 2mTPA-AN. Furthermore, the OLED based on TPA-AN exhibited a pure blue emission with a brightness of 43,110 cd m −2 and a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 8.1%. The integrated OLED-UVOPD devices based on TPA-AN and 2mTPA-AN, achieved detectivities of 7.18 × 10 11 and 2.85 × 10 12 Jones, along with EQEs of 8.7% and 5.9%, respectively.