Color-tunable thiazole-based iridium(III) complexes: Synthesis, characterization and their OLED applications

With respect to the commonly used electron-deficient pyridyl group in the benchmark dopant Ir(ppy)3, incorporating the electron-rich thiazolyl group with different chromophores have not been extensively studied. In this paper, some iridium(III) complexes bearing functional ligands with the thiazolyl moiety were synthesized and characterized by 1H and 13C NMR, UV–Vis absorption and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The emission color of these thiazole-based Ir(III) complexes can be tuned from yellow to red and the best phosphorescent organic light-emitting device exhibited the maximum external quantum efficiency of 11.1%, current efficiency of 35.8 cd/A and power efficiency of 21.9 lm/W.