Controlling Horizontal Dipole Orientation and Emission Spectrum of Ir Complexes by Chemical Design of Ancillary Ligands for Efficient Deep-Blue Organic Light-Emitting Diodes.

Deep-blue emitting Iridium (Ir) complexes with horizontally oriented emitting dipoles are newly designed and synthesized through engineering of the ancillary ligand, where 2',6'-difluoro-4-(trimethylsilyl)-2,3'-bipyridine (dfpysipy) is used as the main ligand. Introduction of a trimethylsilyl group at the pyridine and a nitrogen at the difluoropyrido group increases the bandgap of the emitter, resulting in deep-blue emission. Addition of a methyl group (mpic) to a picolinate (pic) ancillary ligand or replacement of an acetate structure of pic with a perfluoromethyl-triazole structure (fptz) increases the horizontal component of the emitting dipoles in sequence of mpic (86%) > fptz (77%) > pic (74%). The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) using the Ir complex with the mpic ancillary ligand shows the highest external quantum efficiency (31.9%) among the reported blue OLEDs with a y-coordinate value lower than 0.2 in the 1931 Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage (CIE) chromaticity diagram.