Organic electroluminescent device

Abstract

An organic electroluminescent device is disclosed, comprising a substrate having thereon a light-emitting layer sandwiched by an anode and a cathode, wherein the light-emitting layer comprises at least: (1) a host material having electron-transporting or hole-transporting property, (2) Compound A capable of phosphorescence emission at room temperature, and (3) Compound B capable of phosphorescence emission or fluorescence emission at room temperature and having the maximum light emission wavelength longer than the maximum light emission wavelength of Compound A, and the maximum light emission wavelength of said device is attributable to said (3). The light emission attributable to (3) is intensified by (2) to elevate the light emission efficiency and by selecting a fluorescent compound as (3), the device can be prevented from aging deterioration of the luminance.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001] The present invention relates to an organic electroluminescent device. More specifically, the present invention relates to a thin film-type device which emits light upon application of an electric field to a light-emitting layer comprising an organic compound.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002] In conventional thin film-type electroluminescent (EL) devices, an inorganic material group II-VI compound semiconductor such as ZnS, CaS and SrS is generally doped with Mn or a rare earth element (e.g., Eu, Ce, Tb, Sm) as a emission center. However, the EL device fabricated from the above-described inorganic material has problems such that:[0003] 1) a.c. (alternating current) driving is necessary (from 50 to 1,000 Hz),[0004] 2) the driving voltage is high (up to 200 V),[0005] 3) full color emission is difficult (particularly blue) and[0006] 4) the peripheral driving circuit costs highly.[0007] In recent years, however, for the purpose of improving the above-describ...

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Benefits of technology

[0035] More specifically, the present inventors have found that when the constituent element (2), namely, Compound A capable of phosphorescence emission at room temperature is used in combination with the constituent element (3), namely, Compound B which is (a) a phosphorescent compound of not emitting light with high efficiency by itself or (b) a fluorescent compound of emitting light in various colors but incapable of ensuring light emission efficiency as high as that of the phosphorescent compound for any of those colors, Compound A plays a role of sensitizer and the light emission of Compound B is intensified.

[0036] As a result, a device capable of emitting light in various colors can be obtained and accordingly, this is very useful in realizing a flat panel display of multi-color display or full-color display using an organic electroluminescent device.

[0037] In the case where Compound B is a compound capable of fluorescence emission at room temperature, an effect of inhibiting the deterioration of luminance and the decrease in a light emission efficiency can also be provided and this is preferred. By the combination use with the phosphorescence emission Compound A, a light emission color attributable to the fluorescent Compound B and light emission efficiency close to the phosphorescence emission can be realized and at the same time, the aging deterioration of luminance and the decrease in the light emission efficiency when the device emits light at a high luminance, which occurs very often in phosphorescence emission devices, can be inhibited to elevate the driving stability.

Problems solved by technology

However, the EL device fabricated from the above-described inorganic material has problems such that:

3) full color emission is difficult (particularly blue) and

4) the peripheral driving circuit costs highly.

However, only an extremely low luminance could be obtained.

Thereafter, use of an europium complex is studied with an attempt to utilize the triplet excitation state, however, high light emission efficiency could not be attained either by this use.

The organic electroluminescent device using the phosphorescence molecule (T-2) described in the above-described publication emits light with relatively high efficiency, however, the organic electroluminescent device using (T-1) is low in the light emission efficiency as compared with devices using (T-2).

However, use of a phosphorescent substance alone suffers from bad stability of film and low mobility of electric charge (hole or electron) injected from electrodes and accordingly, the light emission efficiency is not elevated.

On the other hand, use of a host material alone cannot provide light emission from a triplet exciton and the material uses its energy mostly for heat and is deactivated, as a result, the light emission efficiency is not elevated.

However, this method involves energy transfer and unless the excited triplet level in the host material is close to the excited triplet level of the phosphorescent substance, the probability of energy transfer decreases and the triplet excitons cannot contribute to the light emission.

However, the organic electroluminescent device using the phosphorescence molecule (T-2) described in the above-described publication, which ensures high-efficiency light emission, is insufficient in the driving stability for practical use (see, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys., Vol. 38, page L1502 (1999)).

Thus, a high-efficiency display device cannot be realized.

This driving deterioration is presumed to arise mainly because of deterioration of the light-emitting layer.

Also, the amount of excitons which are generated but not contribute to the light emission in the light-emitting layer and are thermally deactivated increases and this causes elevation of the temperature of the light-emitting layer.

At this time, the device is considered to deteriorate because the triple exciton is inferior in the thermal stability as compared with singlet exciton.

As such, organic electroluminescent devices using a phosphorescence molecule have a serious problem in the device driving stability for the practical use at present.

However, since conventionally proposed methods of doping a fluorescence dye all utilize the light emission by singlet excitons, the probability of generating excitons is theoretically low as described above and a sufficiently high light emission efficiency cannot be attained.

Furthermore, the method of using a phosphorescence molecule such as (T-1) or (T-2) has a problem in that the number of molecules known to emit phosphorescence at room temperature is very small and desired colors cannot be afforded.

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