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Abstract Ruthenium‐catalyzed butadiene‐mediated benzannulation enabled the first synthesis of 3,10‐(di‐tert‐butyl)rubicene and its N‐doped derivatives as well as preliminary studies on their photophysical properties. Unlike the parent rubicene and 3,10‐(di‐tert‐butyl)rubicene, which adopt classical herringbone‐type packing motifs in the solid state, the N‐doped congener7 bdisplayed columnar packing with an alternating co‐facial arrangement of aromatic and heteroaromatic substructures. 

Abstract Solid‐state triplet–triplet annihilation upconversion (TTAUC) blue emission in an electroluminescence device (i.e., an organic light‐emitting diode (OLED)) is demonstrated. A conventional green fluorophore, tris‐(8‐hydroxyquinoline)aluminum (Alq₃), is employed as the sensitizer that generates 75% triplet under electrical pumping for the blue triplet–triplet annihilation emitter, 9,10‐bis(2′‐naphthyl) anthracene (ADN), with the heterojunction bilayer structure. The operation lifetime is elongated both for ADN blue (4.1x) and Alq₃green (34.8%) emission due to efficient use of excitons and separation of recombination and emission zone. To reduce the singlet quenching (SQ) of blue TTAUC signal by the Alq₃sensitizer with lower bandgap, 1‐(2,5‐dimethyl‐4‐(1‐pyrenyl)phenyl)pyrene (DMPPP) is inserted between the Alq₃and ADN as a triplet‐diffusion‐and‐singlet‐blocking layer. DMPPP exhibits triplet energy close to Alq₃and higher than ADN, as well as higher singlet energy than both Alq₃and ADN. It allows triplet diffusion from Alq₃to ADN, but blocks the SQ of the blue TTAUC signal by Alq₃. 86.1% intrinsic efficiency of TTAUC is demonstrated in this trilayer (Alq₃/DMPPP/ADN) OLED. 

Abstract The application potential of singlet fission (SF), describing the spontaneous conversion of an excited singlet into two triplets, underlines the necessity to independently control SF rates, energetics and the optical band gap. Heterofission, whereby the singlet splits into triplets on chemically distinct chromophores, is a promising approach to control the above-mentioned parameters, but its details are not yet fully understood. Here, we investigate the photophysics of blends of two prototypical SF chromophores, tetracene (TET) and rubrene (RUB) using time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy and time-correlated single photon counting to explore the potential for heterofission in combinations of endothermic SF chromophores. 

Abstract The fission of singlet excitons into triplet pairs in organic materials holds great technological promise, but the rational application of this phenomenon is hampered by a lack of understanding of its complex photophysics. Here, we use the controlled introduction of vacancies by means of spacer molecules in tetracene and pentacene thin films as a tuning parameter complementing experimental observables to identify the operating principles of different singlet fission pathways. Time-resolved spectroscopic measurements in combination with microscopic modelling enables us to demonstrate distinct scenarios, resulting from different singlet-to-triplet pair energy alignments. For pentacene, where fission is exothermic, coherent mixing between the photoexcited singlet and triplet-pair states is promoted by vibronic resonances, which drives the fission process with little sensitivity to the vacancy concentration. Such vibronic resonances do not occur for endothermic materials such as tetracene, for which we find fission to be fully incoherent; a process that is shown to slow down with increasing vacancy concentration. 

Sulfur oxidation state is used to tune organic room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) of symmetric sulfur-bridged carbazole dimers. The sulfide-bridged compound exhibits a factor of 3 enhancement of the phosphorescence efficiency, compared to the sulfoxide and sulfone-bridged analogs, despite sulfone bridges being commonly used in RTP materials. In order to investigate the origin of this enhancement, temperature dependent spectroscopy measurements and theoretical calculations are used. The RTP lifetimes are similar due to similar crystal packing modes. Computational studies reveal that the lone pairs on the sulfur atom have a profound impact on enhancing intersystem crossing rate through orbital mixing and screening, which we hypothesize is the dominant factor responsible for increasing the phosphorescence efficiency. The ability to tune the electronic state without altering crystal packing modes allows the isolation of these effects. This work provides a new perspective on the design principles of organic phosphorescent materials, going beyond the rules established for conjugated ketone/sulfone-based organic molecules.