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A blue iridium carbene complex realizes high‐efficiency blue and white OLEDs (see figure). For a blue OLED, ηp,max is recorded to be 35.9 lm W−1. For a white OLED, ηp,max and ηp,1000 are measured to be 59.9 lm W−1 and 43.3 lm W−1, respectively, without any light‐outcoupling enhancement. This white OLED also shows an illumination‐acceptable CRI over 80.

Recently, solid-state lighting has received considerable attention in both academic and industrial research. [1,2] Of particular interest, for the replacement of the existing light sources, are organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) based on phosphorescent molecules. [3][4][5][6] The advantage of using these materials lies in the possibility to internally convert all the spin uncorrelated injected charges into light. Indeed, an internal quantum efficiency of nearly 100% has been achieved in devices based on the green-emitting organometallic complex Ir(ppy) 3 .[7]However, many unresolved issues are the subject of current research in order to implement efficient white light sources and expand the number of applications. In particular, the origin of the efficiency roll-off at high voltages, [8][9][10] the light outcoupling, [11,12] the long-term stability [13,14] and the generation of white light with an all-phosphor device [6,15] are subjects under intense investigation. White light generation is a key issue because of the wide range of applications involving full-color displays and lighting. [1,2] Among the different approaches, solution processed devices based on white light emitting molecules [16] have been demonstrated as well as thermally evaporated red, green and blue (RGB) blends [15] or stacks. To date, white light OLEDs (WOLEDs) with long term operational lifetimes have been obtained mainly with a combination of a blue fluorescent emitter [6] and phosphors for the other colors. Such an elegant approach relies on a well engineered harvesting of singlet and triplet excitons and requires therefore a precise doping of the RGB emitting dyes in the transporting hosts. In contrast, efficient WOLEDs based on blue phosphors can be obtained with all the emitters in one single layer, [17] simplifying the processing. Generally, however, blue phosphors have in the past turned out to be rather unstable. While a physical explanation for blue phosphor based device instability is still lacking, a shorter phosphorescence lifetime, eventually approaching the sub-microsecond time regime, would decrease the residence time of potentially unstable excited states. Moreover, processes detrimental to the efficiency, such as exciton charge-carrier quenching [8] or triplet-triplet annihilation, [9,10] could be strongly reduced with a faster exciton recombination. A shorter phosphorescence lifetime while maintaining high quantum efficiencies requires a large radiative rate. For organometallic complexes this rate is directly proportional to the spin-orbit coupling (SOC) matrix element involving the emitting triplet and the perturbing singlet state and inversely proportional to the degree of mixing between them, i.e., the singlet-triplet splitting (DE ST ). [18][19][20] Photophysical studies of the role of SOC and DE ST in tuning the radiative rate are still sparse, mainly because the large intersystem crossing (ISC) rates ($10 13 s À1 ) of such phosphors, [21] which makes detection (and therefore direct measurement of DE ST ) rather cha...

Cyclometalated (C^C*) platinum(II) N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) complexes are emerging as a new class of phosphorescent emitters for the application in organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs). We present the synthesis of six new complexes of this class to investigate the influence of extended π systems. Therefore, six different NHC ligands with a varying number of additional phenyl substituents were used in combination with the monoanionic acetylacetonate (acac) ligand to obtain complexes of the general formula [(NHC)Pt(II)(acac)]. The complexes were fully characterized by standard techniques and advanced spectroscopic methods ((195)Pt NMR). For all complexes the solid-state structure determination revealed a square-planar coordination of the platinum atom. Absorption and emission spectra were measured in thin amorphous poly(methyl methacrylate) films at room temperature. Four compounds emit in the blue-green region of the visible spectrum with quantum yields of up to 81%.