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Dielectric control of reverse intersystem crossing in thermally activated delayed fluorescence emitters.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Gillett, Alexander J  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7572-7333
Pandya, Raj 

Abstract

Thermally activated delayed fluorescence enables organic semiconductors with charge transfer-type excitons to convert dark triplet states into bright singlets via reverse intersystem crossing. However, thus far, the contribution from the dielectric environment has received insufficient attention. Here we study the role of the dielectric environment in a range of thermally activated delayed fluorescence materials with varying changes in dipole moment upon optical excitation. In dipolar emitters, we observe how environmental reorganization after excitation triggers the full charge transfer exciton formation, minimizing the singlet-triplet energy gap, with the emergence of two (reactant-inactive) modes acting as a vibrational fingerprint of the charge transfer product. In contrast, the dielectric environment plays a smaller role in less dipolar materials. The analysis of energy-time trajectories and their free-energy functions reveals that the dielectric environment substantially reduces the activation energy for reverse intersystem crossing in dipolar thermally activated delayed fluorescence emitters, increasing the reverse intersystem crossing rate by three orders of magnitude versus the isolated molecule.

Description

Keywords

Fluorescence, Semiconductors

Journal Title

Nat Mater

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1476-1122
1476-4660

Volume Title

21

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/M006360/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/M005143/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/M01083X/1)
European Research Council (670405)
European Research Council (758826)
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