Luminescent properties of thermally activated delayed fluorescence molecule with intramolecular π-π interaction betweendonor and acceptor

Influence of intramolecular π-π interaction on the luminescent properties of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) molecule (3, 5-bis(3,6-di-tert-butyl-9H-carbazol-9-yl)-phenyl)(pyridin-4-yl) methanone (DTCBPY) is theoretically studied by using the density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT). Four conformations (named as A, B, C, and D) of the DTCBPY can be found by relax scanning, and the configuration C corresponds to the luminescent molecule detected experimentally. Besides, we calculate the proportion of each conformation by Boltzmann distribution, high configuration ratios (44% and 52%) can be found for C and D. Moreover, C and D are found to exist with an intramolecular π-π interaction between one donor and the acceptor; the intramolecular interaction brings a smaller Huang-Rhys factor and reduced reorganization energy. Our work presents a rational explanation for the experimental results and demonstrates the importance of the intramolecular π-π interaction to the photophysical properties of TADF molecules.