Advancing Near-Infrared Phosphorescence with Heteroleptic Iridium Complexes Bearing a Single Emitting Ligand: Properties and Organic Light-Emitting Diode Applications

Cyclometalated iridium complexes, emitters of choice in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), hold great potential for near-infrared (NIR) applications. Upon increasing the conjugation size and chemical complexity of the ligands, as required to push the emission toward the NIR), overall high-molecular-weight complexes (both homoleptic and heteroleptic β-diketonate ones) are obtained, posing related issues in OLED processing. One, so far barely explored, question arises: “Why endow Ir(III) with three or two emissive ligands when one might work just as well?” Herein, as proof of concept for OLED technology, we disclose three novel deep-red to NIR emitters of formula Ir(C^N)2(iqbt), with a single iqbt (1-(benzo[b]thiophen-2-yl)-isoquinolinate) ligand responsible for the emission in the NIR range. (C^N) are cyclometalated ligands with higher triplet energy than that of iqbt. We demonstrate that the presence of a single iqbt ligand is sufficient to enable efficient phosphorescence matching that of homoleptic Ir(iqbt)3; moreover, the Ir(C^N)2(iqbt) based OLEDs display efficiency exceeding the one of Ir(iqbt)3. These compounds offer several important benefits: (i) advantageous synthetic protocols limiting to the last step of the use of novel and synthetic costly NIR ligands (implying a lower amount of ligand required), (ii) commercially available (C^N) to prepare the starting Ir chloro-dimers, and (iii) lower molecular weight of the complexes compared to that of the homoleptic parent ones fruitful for easier vacuum thermal processing of the emitters.