Highly improved electroluminescence from a series of novel Eu(III) complexes with functional single-coordinate phosphine oxide ligands: tuning the intramolecular energy transfer, morphology, and carrier injection ability of the complexes.

The functional single-coordinate phosphine oxide ligands (4-diphenylaminophenyl)diphenylphosphine oxide (TAPO), (4-naphthalen-1-yl-phenylaminophenyl)diphenylphosphine oxide (NaDAPO), and 9-[4-(diphenylphosphinoyl)phenyl]-9H-carbazole (CPPO), as the direct combinations of hole-transporting moieties, and electron-transporting triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO) were designed and synthesized (amines or carbazole), together with their Eu(III) complexes [Eu(tapo)(2)(tta)(3)] (1), [Eu(nadapo)(2)(tta)(3)] (2), and [Eu(cppo)(2)(tta)(3)] (3; TTA: 2-thenoyltrifluoroacetonate). The investigation indicated that by taking advantage of the modification inertia of the phosphine oxide ligands, the direct introduction of the hole-transport groups as chromophore made TAPO, NaDAPO, and CPPO obtain the most compact structure and mezzo S(1) and T(1) energy levels, which improved the intramolecular energy transfer in their Eu(III) complexes. The amorphous phase of 1-3 proved the weak intermolecular interaction, which resulted in extraordinarily low self-quenching of the complexes. The excellent double-carrier transport ability of the ligands was studied with Gaussian calculations, and the bipolar structure of TAPO and CPPO was proved. The great improvement of the double-carrier transport ability of 1-3 was shown by cyclic voltammetry. Their HOMO and LUMO energy levels of around 5.3 and 3.0 eV, respectively, are the best results for Eu(III) complexes reported so far. A single-layer organic light-emitting diode of 2 had the impressive brightness of 59 cd m(-2) which, to the best of our knowledge, is the highest reported so far. Both of the four-layer devices based on pure 1 and 2 had a maximum brightness of more than 1000 cd m(-2), turn-on voltages lower than 5 V, maximum external quantum yields of more than 3 % and excellent spectral stability.