Unraveling the degradation mechanism of FIrpic based blue OLEDs: I. A theoretical investigation

Abstract

We report a detailed ab-initio study of the of the microscopic degradation mechanism of FIrpic, a popular blue emitter in OLED devices. We simulate the \emph{operando} conditions of FIrpic by adding an electron-hole pair (exciton) to the system. We perform both static calculations with the TDDFT framework and we also simulate the evolution of the system at finite temperature via Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics. We found triplet excitons are very effective in reducing the Ir-N bond breaking barrier of the picolinate moiety. After the first bond breaking, the two oxygen of picolinate swap their position and FIrpic can either remain stable in an "open" configuration, or loose a picolinate fragment, which at a later stage can evolve a CO${}_2$ molecule. Our method can be applied to other light emitting Ir-complexes in order to quickly estimate their stability in OLED devices. In Paper~II we complement our theoretical study with a parallel experimental investigation of the key degradation steps of FIrpic in an aged device.

27 pages, 1 table, 6 figures

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• Unraveling the degradation mechanism in FIrpic based Blue OLEDs: II. Trap and detect molecules at the interfaces

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Unraveling the degradation mechanism in FIrpic based Blue OLEDs: II. Trap and detect molecules at the interfaces