High efficiency electroluminescence of orange-red iridium(III) complexes for OLEDs with an EQE over 30%

In this study, three pyrazol-pyridine ligands, 2-(3-methyl-1H-pyrazol-5-yl)pyridine (mepzpy), 2-(3-(trifluoromethyl)-1H-pyrazol-5-yl)pyridine (cf3pzpy), and 2-(3-phenyl-1H-pyrazol-5-yl)pyridine (phpzpy) were successfully synthesized for three orange-red iridium (III) complexes Ir1, Ir2, and Ir3, respectively, in which (2,6-bis(trifluoromethyl)pyridin-4-yl)isoquinoline (BTPIQ) was applied as main ligand. Their single crystals were obtained by vacuum sublimation. They showed distinct photoluminescent emissions at 583 nm with a shoulder peak at 624 nm, with high phosphorescence quantum yields of up to 89%. Organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) with these complexes as emitters exhibits good performances. Especially, the device with Ir3 complex achieves the best performance with a maximum luminance of 24,188 cd m−2, and a highest external quantum efficiency of 30.65%. This research proved that Ir(III) complexes show highly enhanced performance by the modification of electro-donating benzene ring group into ancillary ligands, which also offers us an efficient strategy to obtain high efficiency orange-red Ir(III) complexes for OLEDs.