- Open Access
Electron affinity and binding energy of excitons in disordered organic semiconductors. III. Multimethod study for films of the blue fluorescent emitter MADN
Phys. Rev. B 112, 224204 – Published 4 December, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/kcl9-54vq
Abstract
A method is developed for deducing the electron affinity of disordered organic semiconductors from spectroscopic thin-film studies of the ionization energy and the optical gap energy, combined with field-induced dissociation (FID) device experiments that are analyzed with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations using a methodology that has been presented by de Jong et al., Phys. Rev. B 112, 224202 (2025). The FID experiments are carried out for a set of eight organic semiconductor materials that are often used in organic light-emitting diodes. The analysis is focused on the and isomers of the blue fluorescent emitter material 2-methyl-9,10-di-naphthyl-anthracene. For these two materials, the experimental ionization energy, the optical gap energy, the exciton binding energy, and the electron affinity are shown to be consistent with the results of quantum-chemical calculations, presented by G. Tirimbò et al., Phys. Rev. B 112, 224203 (2025). For all fluorescent emitter materials studied, the FID experiments reveal an exciton binding energy of approximately 1.0–1.2 eV, whereas for a thermally activated delayed fluorescence material, a slightly smaller value is obtained.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
See Also
Electron affinity and binding energy of excitons in disordered organic semiconductors. I. Simulation-assisted analysis of field-induced exciton dissociation experiments
Electron affinity and binding energy of excitons in disordered organic semiconductors. II. First-principles simulations and inverse photoemission studies for MADN
Article Text
Supplemental Material
References (66)
- E. J. de Jong, S. Gottardi, H. van Eersel, and R. Coehoorn, companion paper, Electron affinity and binding energy of excitons in disordered organic semiconductors. I. Simulation-assisted analysis of field-induced exciton dissociation experiments, Phys. Rev. B 112, 224202 (2025).
- C. Wu, Y. Hirose, H. Sirringhaus, and A. Kahn, Electron-hole interaction energy in the organic molecular semiconductor ptcda, Chem. Phys. Lett. 272, 43 (1997).
- I. G. Hill, A. Kahn, J. Cornil, D. A. dos Santos, and J. L. Bredas, Occupied and unoccupied electronic levels in organic -conjugated molecules: comparison between experiment and theory, Chem. Phys. Lett. 317, 444 (2000).
- S. Krause, M. B. Casu, A. Schöll, and E. Umbach, Determination of transport levels of organic semiconductors by UPS and IPS, New J. Phys. 10, 085001 (2008).
- H. Yoshida, Near-ultraviolet inverse photoemission spectroscopy using ultra-low energy electrons, Chem. Phys. Lett. 539-540, 180 (2012).
- H. Yoshida and K. Yoshizaki, Electron affinities of organic materials used for organic light-emitting diodes: A low-energy inverse photoemission study, Org. Electron. 20, 24 (2015).
- H. Yoshida, K. Yamada, J. Tsutsumi, and N. Sato, Complete description of ionization energy and electron affinity in organic solids: Determining contributions from electronic polarization, energy band dispersion, and molecular orientation, Phys. Rev. B 92, 075145 (2015).
- G. Tirimbò, O. Nagaoka, S. Fukushima, C. van Hoesel, H. Yoshida, R. Coehoorn, and B. Baumeier, companion paper, Electron affinity and binding energy of excitons in disordered organic semiconductors. II. First-principles simulations and inverse photoemission studies for MADN, Phys. Rev. B 112, 224203 (2025).
- M.-T. Lee, H.-H. Chen, C.-H. Liao, C.-H. Tsai, and C. H. Chen, Stable styrylamine-doped blue organic electroluminescent device based on 2-methyl-9, 10-di (2-naphthyl) anthracene, Appl. Phys. Lett. 85, 3301 (2004).
- M.-T. Lee, C.-H. Liao, C.-H. Tsai, and C. H. Chen, Highly efficient, deep-blue doped organic light-emitting devices, Adv. Mater. 17, 2493 (2005).
- C.-H. Liao, M.-T. Lee, C.-H. Tsai, and C. H. Chen, Highly efficient blue organic light-emitting devices incorporating a composite hole transport layer, Appl. Phys. Lett. 86, 203507 (2005).
- M.-H. Ho, Y.-S. Wu, S.-W. Wen, M.-T. Lee, T.-M. Chen, C. H. Chen, K.-C. Kwok, S.-K. So, K.-T. Yeung, Y.-K. Cheng et al., Highly efficient deep blue organic electroluminescent device based on 1-methyl-9, 10-di (1-naphthyl) anthracene, Appl. Phys. Lett. 89, 252903 (2006).
- M.-H. Ho, M.-Y. Liu, K.-H. Lin, C. H. Chen, and C. W. Tang, 39.2: Efficient single-layer small molecule blue OLEDs based on a multifunctional bipolar transport material, in SID Symposium Digest of Technical Papers, Vol. 41 (Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford, UK, 2010), pp. 552–555.
- M.-H. Ho, B. Balaganesan, and C. H. Chen, Blue fluorescence and bipolar transport materials based on anthracene and their application in OLEDs, Isr. J. Chem. 52, 484 (2012).
- J. Huang, J.-H. Su, and H. Tian, The development of anthracene derivatives for organic light-emitting diodes, J. Mater. Chem. 22, 10977 (2012).
- K. Yoshida, P. P. Manousiadis, R. Bian, Z. Chen, C. Murawski, M. C. Gather, H. Haas, G. A. Turnbull, and I. D. Samuel, 245 Mhz bandwidth organic light-emitting diodes used in a gigabit optical wireless data link, Nat. Commun. 11, 1171 (2020).
- G. Tirimbò, X. de Vries, C. H. L. Weijtens, P. A. Bobbert, T. Neumann, R. Coehoorn, and B. Baumeier, Quantitative predictions of photoelectron spectra in amorphous molecular solids from multiscale quasiparticle embedding, Phys. Rev. B 101, 035402 (2020).
- S.-W. Wen, M.-T. Lee, and C. H. Chen, Recent development of blue fluorescent OLED materials and devices, J. Display Technol. 1, 90 (2005).
- S.-K. Kim, B. Yang, Y. Ma, J.-H. Lee, and J.-W. Park, Exceedingly efficient deep-blue electroluminescence from new anthracenes obtained using rational molecular design, J. Mater. Chem. 18, 3376 (2008).
- T. Zheng and W. C. Choy, High-efficiency blue fluorescent organic light emitting devices based on double emission layers, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 41, 055103 (2008).
- Y.-H. Kim, J. H. Seo, G. W. Hyung, S. Y. Lee, D. H. Ryu, S. J. Chae, S. S. Shin, Y. K. Kim, and W. Y. Kim, Fabrication of white organic light-emitting diodes using two complementary color methods, Mol. Cryst. Liq. Cryst. 510, 282 (2009).
- M. H. Park, Y. S. Kim, S. Lee, and K. H. Koh, Optical properties of a blue light-emitting host material, MADN, New Physics: Sae Mulli 57, 133 (2008).
- K. H. Lee, S. O. Kim, J. N. You, S. Kang, J. Y. Lee, K. S. Yook, S. O. Jeon, J. Y. Lee, and S. S. Yoon, Tert-butylated spirofluorene derivatives with arylamine groups for highly efficient blue organic light emitting diodes, J. Mater. Chem. 22, 5145 (2012).
- N. Xiang, X. Huang, Z. Xia, G. Tian, J. Huang, Q. Wang, and J. Su, Synthesis and properties of novel 9, 10-di (naphthalen-2-yl) anthracene derivatives, Tetrah. Lett. 57, 1847 (2016).
- X. Ren, J. Li, R. J. Holmes, P. I. Djurovich, S. R. Forrest, and M. E. Thompson, Ultrahigh energy gap hosts in deep blue organic electrophosphorescent devices, Chem. Mater. 16, 4743 (2004).
- C. H. L. Weijtens (unpublished).
- M. de Jong, L. Seijo, A. Meijerink, and F. T. Rabouw, Resolving the ambiguity in the relation between Stokes shift and Huang–Rhys parameter, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 17, 16959 (2015).
- See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/kcl9-54vq for the overviews of the wavelength dependent absorption and photoluminescence (PL) spectra and of time-resolved PL experiments for the two isomers of MADN, Franck-Condon analyses of the PL spectra, current-voltage characteristics, capacitance-frequency curves, voltage dependent PL spectra and the time-resolved photocurrent density for all devices for which FID experiments have been carried out, results of a study of the thickness dependence of FID curves for NPB-based devices, results of a study of the hole hopping attempt rate in films of the two isomers of MADN, and an analysis of the possible effect of field-dependent nonradiative decay on the results of FID experiments, which includes Refs. [12, 13, 32, 43, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66].
- M. Pope and C. E. Swenberg, Electronic Processes in Organic Crystals and Polymers (Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1999).
- T. Serevičius, R. Komskis, P. Adomėnas, O. Adomėnienė, V. Jankauskas, A. Gruodis, K. Kazlauskas, and S. Juršėnas, Non-symmetric 9, 10-diphenylanthracene-based deep-blue emitters with enhanced charge transport properties, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 16, 7089 (2014).
- S. R. Forrest, Organic Electronics: Foundations to Applications (Oxford University Press, New York, 2020).
- X. de Vries, P. Friederich, W. Wenzel, R. Coehoorn, and P. A. Bobbert, Full quantum treatment of charge dynamics in amorphous molecular semiconductors, Phys. Rev. B 97, 075203 (2018).
- S. T. Hoffmann, S. Athanasopoulos, D. Beljonne, H. Bässler, and A. Köhler, How do triplets and charges move in disordered organic semiconductors? A Monte Carlo study comprising the equilibrium and nonequilibrium regime, J. Phys. Chem. C 116, 16371 (2012).
- P. K. H. Ho, J.-S. Kim, N. Tessler, and R. H. Friend, Photoluminescence of poly(p-phenylenevinylene)–silica nanocomposites: Evidence for dual emission by Franck-Condon analysis, J. Chem. Phys. 115, 2709 (2001).
- F. Gao, Y. Zhao, and W. Liang, Theoretical studies toward understanding the excited state dynamics of a bichromophoric molecule, J. Chem. Phys. 126, 224509 (2007).
- G. Heimel, M. Daghofer, J. Gierschner, E. J. List, A. C. Grimsdale, K. Müllen, D. Beljonne, J.-L. Brédas, and E. Zojer, Breakdown of the mirror image symmetry in the optical absorption/emission spectra of oligo(para-phenylene)s, J. Chem. Phys. 122, 054501 (2005).
- W.-L. Tsai, M.-H. Huang, W.-K. Lee, Y.-J. Hsu, K.-C. Pan, Y.-H. Huang, H.-C. Ting, M. Sarma, Y.-Y. Ho, H.-C. Hu et al., A versatile thermally activated delayed fluorescence emitter for both highly efficient doped and non-doped organic light emitting devices, Chem. Commun. 51, 13662 (2015).
- A. Kahn, N. Koch, and W. Gao, Electronic structure and electrical properties of interfaces between metals and -conjugated molecular films, J. Polym. Sc. B: Polymer Phys. 41, 2529 (2003).
- X. de Vries, P. Friederich, W. Wenzel, R. Coehoorn, and P. A. Bobbert, Triplet exciton diffusion in metalorganic phosphorescent host-guest systems from first principles, Phys. Rev. B 99, 205201 (2019).
- C. H. L. Weijtens (unpublished).
- C. Hauenstein, X. De Vries, C. Weijtens, P. Imbrasas, P.-A. Will, S. Lenk, K. Ortstein, S. Reineke, P. Bobbert, R. Coehoorn et al., Suppressing exciton deconfinement and dissociation for efficient thermally activated delayed fluorescence OLEDs, J. Appl. Phys. 130, 155501 (2021).
- I. G. Hill and A. Kahn, Energy level alignment at interfaces of organic semiconductor heterostructures, J. Appl. Phys. 84, 5583 (1998).
- R. Coehoorn, X. Lin, C. H. L. Weijtens, S. Gottardi, and H. van Eersel, Three-dimensional modeling of organic light-emitting diodes containing molecules with large electric dipole moments, Phys. Rev. Appl. 16, 034048 (2021).
- P. Friederich, V. Rodin, F. von Wrochem, and W. Wenzel, Built-in potentials induced by molecular order in amorphous organic thin films, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 10, 1881 (2018).
- B. A. Naqvi, M. Schmid, E. Crovini, P. Sahay, T. Naujoks, F. Rodella, Z. Zhang, P. Strohriegl, S. Bräse, E. Zysman-Colman et al., What controls the orientation of TADF emitters? Front. Chem. 8, 750 (2020).
- B. W. D'Andrade, S. Datta, S. R. Forrest, P. Djurovich, E. Polikarpov, and M. E. Thompson, Relationship between the ionization and oxidation potentials of molecular organic semiconductors, Org. Electron. 6, 11 (2005).
- I. Hill, A. Kahn, Z. Soos, and R. Pascal, Jr., Charge-separation energy in films of -conjugated organic molecules, Chem. Phys. Lett. 327, 181 (2000).
- T.-A. Lin, T. Chatterjee, W.-L. Tsai, W.-K. Lee, M.-J. Wu, M. Jiao, K.-C. Pan, C.-L. Yi, C.-L. Chung, K.-T. Wong et al., Sky-blue organic light emitting diode with 37% external quantum efficiency using thermally activated delayed fluorescence from spiroacridine-triazine hybrid, Adv. Mater. 28, 6976 (2016).
- M. Y. Wong and E. Zysman-Colman, Purely organic thermally activated delayed fluorescence materials for organic light-emitting diodes, Adv. Mater. 29, 1605444 (2017).
- K. Stavrou, L. G. Franca, and A. P. Monkman, Photophysics of TADF guest-host systems: Introducing the idea of hosting potential, ACS Appl. Electr. Mater. 2, 2868 (2020).
- R. Dhali, D. A. P. Huu, F. Bertocchi, C. Sissa, F. Terenziani, and A. Painelli, Understanding TADF: A joint experimental and theoretical study of DMAC-TRZ, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 23, 378 (2021).
- C. Murawski, K. Leo, and M. C. Gather, Efficiency roll-off in organic light-emitting diodes, Adv. Mater. 25, 6801 (2013).
- X. de Vries and R. Coehoorn, Vibrational mode contribution to the dielectric permittivity of disordered small-molecule organic semiconductors, Phys. Rev. Mater. 4, 085602 (2020).
- D. Lenstra, A. P. A. Fischer, A. Ouirimi, A. C. Chime, N. Loganathan, and M. Chakaroun, Ultra-short optical pulse generation in micro oleds and the perspective of lasing, J. Opt. 24, 034007 (2022).
- A. S. Sandanayaka, T. Matsushima, F. Bencheikh, S. Terakawa, W. J. Potscavage, C. Qin, T. Fujihara, K. Goushi, J.-C. Ribierre, and C. Adachi, Indication of current-injection lasing from an organic semiconductor, Appl. Phys. Expr. 12, 061010 (2019).
- K. Yoshida, J. Gong, A. L. Kanibolotsky, P. J. Skabara, G. A. Turnbull, and I. D. W. Samuel, Electrically driven organic laser using integrated OLED pumping, Nature (London) 621, 746 (2023).
- E. J. de Jong, N. G. de Rooij, W. F. M. van Geel, C. Hauenstein, H. Tomita, G. Tirimbò, M. Berghuis, S. Fukushima, S. Gottardi, B. Baumeier, H. Yoshida, and R. Coehoorn, Data underlying publication “Electron affinity and binding energy of excitons in disordered organic semiconductors. III. Multimethod study for films of the blue fluorescent emitter MADN”, 4TU.ResearchData (2025), 10.4121/d320a48b-aed4-49c3-9885-82cbac8ffe5d.
- J. C. de Mello, H. F. Wittmann, and R. H. Friend, An improved experimental determination of external photoluminescence quantum efficiency, Adv. Mater. 9, 230 (1997).
- H. C. F. Martens, H. B. Brom, and P. W. M. Blom, Frequency-dependent electrical response of holes in poly (p-phenylene vinylene), Phys. Rev. B 60, R8489 (1999).
- H. van Eersel, P. Bobbert, R. Janssen, and R. Coehoorn, Monte Carlo study of efficiency roll-off of phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes: Evidence for dominant role of triplet-polaron quenching, Appl. Phys. Lett. 105, 143303 (2014).
- S. Gottardi, M. Barbry, R. Coehoorn, and H. van Eersel, Efficiency loss processes in hyperfluorescent OLEDs: A kinetic Monte Carlo study, Appl. Phys. Lett. 114, 073301 (2019).
- A. Ligthart, T. D. Nevels, C. H. Weijtens, P. A. Bobbert, and R. Coehoorn, Mechanistic description of the efficiency loss in organic phosphorescent host–guest systems due to triplet-polaron quenching, Org. Electron. 91, 106058 (2021).
- N. B. Kotadiya, A. Mondal, P. W. M. Blom, D. Andrienko, and G.-J. A. H. Wetzelaer, A window to trap-free charge transport in organic semiconducting thin films, Nat. Mater. 18, 1182 (2019).
- N. B. Kotadiya, A. Mondal, S. Xiong, P. W. Blom, D. Andrienko, and G.-J. A. Wetzelaer, Rigorous characterization and predictive modeling of hole transport in amorphous organic semiconductors, Adv. Electr. Mater. 4, 1800366 (2018).
- F. Liu, Y. Su, X. Lin, L. Nian, B. Wu, Q. Niu, H. van Eersel, P. A. Bobbert, R. Coehoorn, and G. Zhou, Image-force-stabilized interfacial dipole layer impedes charge injection into disordered organic semiconductors, Phys. Rev. Appl. 17, 024003 (2022).
- M.-H. Ho (private communication).