Unraveling the Degradation Mechanism in FIrpic-Based Blue OLEDs: II. Trap and Detect Molecules at the Interfaces

The impact of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) in modern life is witnessed by their wide employment in full-color, energy-saving, flat panel displays and smart screens; a bright future is likewise expected in the field of solid-state lighting. Cyclometalated iridium complexes are the most used phosphorescent emitters in OLEDs because of their widely tunable photophysical properties and their versatile synthesis. Blue-emitting OLEDs suffer from intrinsic instability issues hampering their long-term stability. Backed by computational studies, in this work, we studied the sky-blue emitter bis[2-(4,6-difluorophenyl)pyridyl-C2,N](picolinato)iridium(III) (FIrpic) in both ex situ and in situ degradation experiments combining complementary, mutually independent experiments including chemical metathesis reactions, in liquid phase and solid state, thermal and spectroscopic studies, and liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry investigations. We developed a straightforward protocol to evaluate the degradation pathways in iridium complexes, finding that FIrpic degrades through the loss of the picolinate ancillary ligand. The resulting iridium fragment was than efficiently trapped “in situ” as BPhen derivative 1. This process is found to be well mirrored when a suitably engineered, FIrpic-based OLED is operated and aged. In this paper, we (i) describe how it is possible to effectively study OLED materials with a small set of readily accessible experiments and (ii) evidence the central role of host matrix in trapping experiments.