Achieving High Circularly Polarized Luminescence with Push-Pull Helicenic Systems: From Rationalized Design to Top-Emission CP-OLED Applications

While the development of chiral molecules displaying circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) has received considerable attention, the corresponding CPL intensity, glum, hardly exceeds 10−2 at the molecular level owing to the difficulty in optimizing the key parameters governing such a luminescence process. To address this challenge, we report here the synthesis and chiroptical properties of a new family of π-helical push–pull systems based on carbo[6]helicene, where the latter acts as either a chiral electron acceptor or a donor unit. This comprehensive experimental and theoretical investigation shows that the magnitude and relative orientation of the electric (μe) and magnetic (μm) dipole transition moments can be tuned efficiently with regard to the molecular chiroptical properties, which results in high glum values, i.e. up to 3–4 × 10−2. Our investigations revealed that the optimized mutual orientation of the electric and magnetic dipoles in the excited state is a crucial parameter to achieve intense helicene-mediated exciton coupling, which is a major contributor to the obtained strong CPL. Finally, top-emission CP-OLEDs were fabricated through vapor deposition, which afforded a promising gEl of around 8 × 10−3. These results bring about further molecular design guidelines to reach high CPL intensity and offer new insights into the development of innovative CP-OLED architectures.