A series of anthracene based blue host materials was synthesized and characterized with respect to their chemical, luminescence, film-forming and thermal properties. The anthracene derivatives are strongly blue fluorescent (lambda(f) = 435-445 nm) with high fluorescence quantum yields (Phi(f) = 0.71-0.85). All of these compounds have excellent film-forming properties and thermal properties. Organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) fabricated using these three compounds as blue host emitter and using 0.5-wt% tetra (t-butyl) perylene (TBPe) dopant in the emitting layer exhibit good light emitting performance with bright blue emission. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.