Exploiting the Reactivity of Fluorinated 2-Arylpyridines in Pd-Catalyzed C-H Bond Arylation for the Preparation of Bright Emitting Iridium(III) Complexes.

Pd-catalyzed C-H bond arylation applied to 2-(2,4-difluorophenyl)-5-(trifluoromethyl)pyridine () and 2-(3,5-difluorophenyl)-5-(trifluoromethyl)pyridine () allows the access to two families of Ir(III) complexes, charge-neutral and cationic species. The reaction is regioselective since only the C3- or C4-position of the fluorinated phenyl ring of or is readily functionalized - namely the C-H bond flanked by the two fluorine atoms which is the most acidic - which allows the electronic control of the reactive site. A range of electron-withdrawing (CN, COEt, C(O)Me) substituents on the aryl group has been incorporated leading to the pro-ligands (, Ar-2,4-dFppy; , Ar = -CH-CN; , Ar = -CH-COEt; , Ar = -CH-C(O)Me; , and Ar-3,5-dFppy; , Ar = -CH-COEt). The unsubstituted complexes and / featuring and , respectively, as C^N ligands are used as reference complexes. The families of five charge-neutral [Ir(C^N)(N^O)] complexes (C^N is 2-(5-aryl-(4,6-difluorophenyl)-5-(trifluoromethyl)pyridinato (-), and 2-(4-aryl-(3,5-difluorophenyl)-5-(trifluoromethyl)pyridinato (-), N^O = 2-picolinate) and five cationic [Ir(C^N)(N^N)]PF complexes (N^N = dmbpy is 4,4'-dimethyl-2,2'-bipyridine) (-) were synthesized, and their structural and photophysical properties were studied with comparison to the unsubstituted analogues used as reference complexes. The appended aryl group provides large steric bulk as the biaryl fragment is twisted as shown by the X-ray crystal structures of , , , , and . These latter complexes display a wide variety of different Ir···Ir intermetallic distances in crystals, from 8.150 Å up to 15.034 Å. Moreover, the impact on the emission energy is negligible, as a result of the breaking of the conjugation between the two aryl groups. Charge-neutral complexes [Ir(C^N)(N^O)] (N^O = 2-picolinate) show bright luminescence: - (λ = 495-499 nm) are blue-green emitters, whereas and (λ = 537, 544 nm), where the fluorine substituents are located at the C3- and C5-positions, emit in the green region of the visible spectrum. In all cases, a unitary photoluminescence quantum yield is found. The improvement of Φ might be explained by an increase of the radiative rate constant due to a higher degree of rigidity of these congested molecules, compared to the unsubstituted complex . The same trends are observed for the family of complexes . Complexes exhibit blue photoluminescence, and and lead to a red-shifted emission band, as also found for the related complexes and due to the similar fluorine substitution pattern. Their emission quantum yields are remarkably high for charged complexes in the CHCl solution. These results showed that Pd-catalyzed C-H bond arylation is a valuable synthetic approach for designing efficient emitters with tunable photophysical properties.