Rational design of phosphorescent iridium(III) complexes for emission color tunability and their applications in OLEDs

This review is an update on recent developments in emissive iridium(III) phosphorescent complexes and their applications in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). The emphasis is focused on complexes with emission colors spanning the whole visible spectral region, which is extremely important for applications of OLEDs in display and white-light luminance. In each color section, materials are classified according to their coordination configuration, including homoleptic, heteroleptic and tridentate, trying to clarify the relationship between the molecular structure and the photophysical properties. Since the emission color, photoluminescence efficiency and carrier mobility of the phosphors are critical for device performances, we endeavor to dig out these values along with the measuring methods from the publications, and rational chemical modifications aiming for high efficiency and carrier mobility with different colors are also discussed.