Getting the Right Twist: Influence of Donor-Acceptor Dihedral Angle on Exciton Kinetics and Singlet-Triplet Gap in Deep Blue Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence Emitter.

Here a novel deep blue emitter SBABz4 for use in organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) is investigated. The molecular design of the emitter enables thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF), which we examine by temperature-dependent time-resolved electroluminescence (trEL) and photoluminescence (trPL). We show that the dihedral anglebetween donor and acceptor strongly affects the oscillator strengthof the charge transfer state alongside the singlet-triplet gap. The angular dependence of the singlet-triplet gap is calculated by time-dependent density functional theory(TD-DFT). A gap of 15 meV is calculated for the relaxed ground state configuration of SBABz4 with a dihedral anglebetween the donor and acceptor moieties of 86°. Surprisingly, an experimentally obtained energy gap of 72+/-5 meV can only be explained by torsion angles in the range of 70°-75°. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations showed that SBABz4 evaporated at high temperature acquires a distribution of torsion angles, which immediately leads to the experimentally obtained energy gap. Moreover, the emitter orientation anisotropy in a host matrix shows an 80% ratio of horizontally oriented dipoles, which is highly desirable for efficient light outcoupling. Understanding intramolecular donor-acceptor geometry in evaporated films is crucial for OLED applications, because it affects oscillator strengthand TADF efficiency.