The organic electroluminescent (EL) technology, which has been the research focus in the field of electro-optical information, holds a wide range of potential application in domains of communication, information, display, illumination and so on. Organic EL materials have many advantages when compared to their inorganic counterparts. Carbazole, as a kind of rigid plane biphenyl compound with wide band gap, high luminescent efficiency and high flexibility to modify the molecule skeleton, has been a key chromophore in organic EL materials. In this regard, carbazole-based chromophores are widely used in the synthesis of highly efficient blue light-emitting materials, charge-transporting materials and host materials. In this review paper, different chemical modifying methods to improve the performance of carbazole-based EL material are presented in detail, and these methods include different linkage methods, synthesis of molecules with non-conjugation linkage conformation, bipolar characteristic, heterocycle replacements, multifunctional integration strategies and so on. Finally, some issues to be addressed and hotspots to be further investigated are also discussed.
Keywords: Carbazole, Chromophore, Synthesis, Organic Light-emitting Material, Carbazole, non-conjugation, electro-optical, heterocycle replacements, inorganic counterparts, optoelectronic