Optimal Dihedral Angle in Twisted Donor-Acceptor Organic Emitters for Maximized Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence.

The twisted donor-acceptor (D-A) organic formwork with a large dihedral angle (θDA ) is usually adopted to narrow the singlet-triplet energy gap for obtaining excellent thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters. However, the dependence of overall TADF properties on θDA has not been systematically investigated to this day. Taking new designed CzBP, CzBP-1M and CzBP-2M via introducing methyl as investigated models, it is found that (i) with increasing θDA , the charge transfer component in S1 is larger than that in T1 in varying degrees, leading to non-monotonic spin-orbit couplings; (ii) the electron-vibration couplings between S1 and T1 states become the largest when θDA approaching 80°, facilitating phonon-driven up-conversion; (iii) the overall TADF rate reaches a peak at θDA ≈80°. By this, the TADF on/off switching is realized via methyl moiety for regulating θDA from theoretical prediction to experimental confirmation. Importantly, the θDA near 80° would be a good descriptor for screening excellent D-A type TADF emitters.