High-Efficiency Deep-Blue-Emitting Organic Light-Emitting Diodes Based on Iridium(III) Carbene Complexes

High-efficiency pure blue phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) remain one of the grand challenges, principally because the emissive complexes employed either do not possess sufficiently high photoluminescence quantum yields or exhibit unsatisfactory Commission International de l'Eclairage (CIE) coordinates. Here two deep-blue-emitting homoleptic iridium(III) complexes are reported and OLEDs are demonstrated with CIE coordinates of (0.15, 0.05) and maximum external quantum efficiency of 13.4%, which decreases slightly to 12.5% at 100 cd m(-2). They represent examples of the most efficient OLEDs surpassing the CIEy requirement of the National Television System Committee (NTSC) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Emitter orientation contributes to the excellent device performance.