A novel nicotinonitrile derivative CZN has been designed with the aim of developing excellent multifunctional blue fluorophores for hybrid white organic light-emitting devices (WOLEDs) by introducing the nicotinonitrile group as the electron acceptor. CZN shows highly efficient blue fluorescence and its non-doped blue OLED delivers an external quantum efficiency (EQE) as high as 4.6%. Meanwhile, CZN is a promising host for phosphorescent OLEDs, realizing high EQEs of 22.8%, 24.8% and 19.9% for yellow, orange and deep-red phosphorescence, respectively. By using CZN as the blue emitter and the host simultaneously, a hybrid white OLED has been achieved with a forward-viewing EQE of 17.2%. These results indicate that the nicotinonitrile unit is an excellent building block for developing new multifunctional compounds as both blue fluorescent emitters and phosphorescent hosts for efficient hybrid WOLEDs. 

J. Mater. Chem. C, 2015 

Calculated spatial distributions of the HOMO (left) and the LUMO (right) of CZN.