The photophysical properties of sulfone-based TADF emitters in relation to their structural properties.

In this work, thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) of a series of emitters with sulfone-based acceptor moieties was studied by density functional theory (DFT) methods. Sulfone derivatives were shown to be high performing TADF emitters over recent years. When discussing the TADF efficiency, various properties, such as the singlet-triplet energy gap (Δ), spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and the nature of states, stand out due to their roles in reverse intersystem crossing (RISC).