Robust and highly efficient blue light-emitting hosts based on indene-substituted anthracene

Two new unsymmetrically indene-substituted 10-naphthylanthracene derivatives, 9-(4-(1,1′-dimethylinden-3-yl)phenyl)-10-(1-naphthyl)anthracene (DMIP-1-NA) and 9-(4-(1,1′-dimethylinden-3-yl)phenyl)-10-(2-naphthyl)anthracene (DMIP-2-NA), were easily synthesized. Both of them show intense fluorescence and good thermal stability. Three-layer organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) using these anthracene derivatives as blue host materials and diphenyl-[4-(2-[1,1′;4′,1′′]terphenyl-4-yl-vinyl)-phenyl]amine (BD-1) as the dopant emitter have been fabricated. Highly efficient and color stable OLEDs were achieved under the range of doping concentration from 3% to 7%. A further optimized device structure based on DMIP-2-NA exhibited a maximum power efficiency of 8.39 lm W−1 (7.6 cd A−1 at 2.90 V) with a pure blue emission at CIEx,y coordinates of (0.14, 0.18).