Efficient light-emitting diodes from organic radicals with doublet emission

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) with doublet-spin radical emitters have emerged as a new route to efficient display technologies. In contrast to standard organic semiconductors, radical materials have unpaired electrons. This feature results in the most well-known examples of organic radicals being where they are reactive species in chemical reactions. Stabilized radicals can be used in optoelectronic applications, which exploit their optical and spin properties, allowing up to 100% internal quantum efficiency (IQE) for electroluminescence. Highly efficient OLEDs have been demonstrated, which operate in the doublet-spin electronic state manifold with doublet emission. The radical-based devices present a departure from the singlet- and triplet-level considerations that impose efficiency limits in OLEDs for typical organic semiconductors (25% IQE). This Perspective focuses on radical doublet emitters for optoelectronics, outlining how the photo- and spin-physics of unpaired electron systems present new avenues for research in light-emitting applications.