Versatile Design Strategy for Highly Luminescent Vacuum-Evaporable and Solution-Processable Tridentate Gold(III) Complexes with Monoaryl Auxiliary Ligands and Their Applications for Phosphorescent Organic Light Emitting Devices.

A new class of brightly blue-green-emitting arylgold(III) complexes has been synthesized, characterized, and applied as phosphorescent dopants in the fabrication of solution-processable and vacuum-deposited organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs). These arylgold(III) complexes can be readily synthesized by reacting the corresponding arylboronic acids with the gold(III) precursor complexes in a one-pot Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reaction. When compared to the structurally related alkynylgold(III) complex, arylgold(III) complexes 1 and 2 exhibit much higher photoluminescence quantum yields in solution state. High photoluminescence quantum yields are also observed in solid-state thin films. More importantly, the solid-state emission spectra show strong resemblance to those in solution, irrespective of the dopant concentration, leading to significant improvement in the color purity of the OLEDs by suppressing any excimer emission resulting from the π-stacking of the tridentate ligand. High performance solution-processable and vacuum-deposited blue-green-emitting OLEDs have also been realized, with maximum external quantum efficiencies of 7.3% and 14.7%, respectively, representing the first demonstration of efficient blue-green-emitting OLEDs based on cyclometalated arylgold(III) complexes.