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Intermolecular charge-transfer aggregates enable high-efficiency near-infrared emissions by nonadiabatic coupling suppression

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Abstract

Pursuing purely organic materials with high-efficiency near-infrared (NIR) emissions is fundamentally limited by the large non-radiative decay rates (knr) governed by the energy gap law. To date, reported endeavors to decelerate knr are mainly focused on reducing the electron-vibration coupling with the electronic nonadiabatic coupling assumed as a constant. Here, we demonstrated a feasible and innovative strategy by employing intermolecular charge-transfer (CT) aggregates (CTA) to realize high-efficiency NIR emissions via nonadiabatic coupling suppression. The formation of CTA engenders intermolecular CT in the excited states; thereby, not only reducing the electronic nonadiabatic coupling and contributing to small knr for high-efficiency NIR photoluminescence, but also stabilizing excited-state energies and achieving thermally activated delayed fluorescence for high-efficiency NIR electroluminescence. This work provides new insights into aggregates and opens a new avenue for organic materials to overcome the energy gap law and achieve high-efficiency NIR emissions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51773109, 21788102), National Key R&D Program of China (2020YFA0715001, 2017YFA0204501), National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents (BX20180159), and the Project funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2019M660606). Research presented in this article was posted on a preprint server prior to publication in Science China Chemistry. The corresponding preprint article can be found here: https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv.14330591.v1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Lab of Organic Optoelectronics and Molecular Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Jie Xue, Jingyi Xu, Jiajun Ren, Qingxin Liang, Qi Ou, Rui Wang, Zhigang Shuai & Juan Qiao

  2. Center for Flexible Electronics Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Jie Xue & Juan Qiao

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  1. Jie Xue
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  2. Jingyi Xu
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  3. Jiajun Ren
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  4. Qingxin Liang
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Correspondence to Jiajun Ren or Juan Qiao.

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Intermolecular charge-transfer aggregates enable high-efficiency near-infrared emissions by nonadiabatic coupling suppression, approximately 14.7 MB.

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Xue, J., Xu, J., Ren, J. et al. Intermolecular charge-transfer aggregates enable high-efficiency near-infrared emissions by nonadiabatic coupling suppression. Sci. China Chem. 64, 1786–1795 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-021-1096-8

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