Luminescent Complexes of Platinum, Iridium, and Coinage Metals Containing N-Heterocyclic Carbene Ligands: Design, Structural Diversity, and Photophysical Properties

The employment of N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) to design luminescent metal compounds has been the focus of recent intense investigations because of the strong σ-donor properties, which bring stability to the whole system and tend to push the d–d dark states so high in energy that they are rendered thermally inaccessible, thereby generating highly emissive complexes for useful applications such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), or featuring chiroptical properties, a field that is still in its infancy. Among the NHC complexes, those containing organic chromophores such as naphthalimide, pyrene, and carbazole exhibit rich emission behavior and thus have attracted extensive interest in the past five years, especially carbene coinage metal complexes with carbazolate ligands. In this review, the design strategies of NHC-based luminescent platinum and iridium complexes with large spin–orbit-coupling (SOC) are described first. Subsequent paragraphs illustrate the recent advances of luminescent coinage metal complexes with nucleophilic- and electrophilic-based carbenes based on silver, gold, and copper metal complexes that have the ability to display rich excited state emissions in particular via thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF). The luminescence mechanism and excited state dynamics are also described. We then summarize the advance of NHC–metal complexes in the aforementioned fields in recent years. Finally, we propose the development trend of this fast-growing field of luminescent NHC–metal complexes.