Tetraphenylpyrazine decorated 1,3-di(9H-carbazol-9-yl)benzene (mCP): a new AIE-active host with enhanced performance in organic light-emitting diodes

Aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) have been widely used in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), but few works have reported on utilizing AIEgens as hosts in doped OLEDs. In this work, a new AIEgen of TPP-mCP was designed and synthesized by integrating a typical AIE moiety of tetraphenylpyrazine (TPP) with a conventional host of 1,3-di(9H-carbazol-9-yl)benzene (mCP). TPP-mCP exhibits better thermal and conformational stability and carrier capacity, and higher emission efficiency in the film state than those of mCP. More importantly, the OLEDs fabricated with TPP-mCP as the host show much higher electroluminescent performance than those with mCP. Thus, this work not only generates a new AIE-active host of TPP-mCP with high device performance, but also provides a strategy to construct more effective hosts by decorating conventional ones with AIE units, which will potentially promote the development of OLEDs.