Confinement of Long-Lived Triplet Excitons in Organic Semiconducting Host–Guest Systems

Long-lived triplet excitons on organic molecules easily deactivate at room temperature because of the presence of thermally activated nonradiative pathways. This study demonstrates long-lived phosphorescence at room temperature resulting from suppression of the nonradiative deactivation of triplet excitons in conventional organic semiconducting host–guest systems. The nonradiative deactivation pathway strongly depends on the triplet energy gap between the guest emitting molecules and the host matrices. The triplet energy gap required to confine the long-lived triplet excitons (≈0.5 eV) is much larger than that of conventional host–guest systems for phosphorescent emitters. By effectively confining the triplet excitons, this study demonstrates long-lived room-temperature phosphorescence under optical and electrical excitation.