Photophysical Properties of Benzophenone Based TADF Emitters in Relation to Their Molecular Structure

Thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials are commonly used in various apparatus, including organic light emitting device (OLED)-based displays, as they remarkably improve the internal quantum efficiencies (IQE). Alt-hough there is a wide range of donor-acceptor based compounds possessing TADF properties, in this computational study we investigated TADF and some non-TADF chromophores, containing benzophenone or its structural derivatives as the acceptor core, together with various donor moieties. Following the computational modeling of the emitters, several excited state properties, such as the absorption spectra, singlet-triplet energy gaps (∆EST), natural transition orbitals (NTO) and the topological ΦS indices, have been computed. Along with the donor-acceptor torsion angles and spin-orbit coupling (SOC) values, these descriptors have been utilized to investigate potential TADF efficiency. Our study has shown that on the one hand, our photophysical/structural descriptors and computational methodologies predict the experi-mental results quite well, on the other hand, our extensive benchmark can be useful to pinpoint the most promising func-tionals and descriptors for the study of benzophenone based TADF emitters

A Computational Descriptor Analysis on Excited State Behaviours of a Series of TADF and Non-TADF Compounds

The thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) behaviours of seventeen organic TADF emitters and two non-TADF chromophores bearing various donor and acceptor moieties were investigated, focusing on their torsion angles, singlet-triplet gap (ΔEST), spin orbit couplings (SOC) and topological ΦS index. Electronic structure calculations were performed in the framework of the Tamm-Dancoff approximation (TDA) allowing to characterize reverse intersystem crossing (RISC) probability between the S1 and T1 states. In addition, experimental ΔEST data were taken into account to choose the most appropriate functional and basis set, while absorption spectra were obtained by considering vibrational and dynamical effects through a Wigner sampling of the ground state equilibrium regions. Examining all the parameters obtained in our computational study, we rationalized the influence of electron-donating and electron-accepting groups and the effects of geometrical factors, namely torsion angles, on a wide class of diverse compounds ultimately providing an easy and computationally effective protocol to assess TADF efficiencies