Judicious Choice of N-Heterocycles for the Realization of Sky-Blue Green-Emitting Carbazolylgold(III) C^C^N Complexes and Their Applications for Organic Light-Emitting Devices.

A new class of sky-blue containing pyrazole or benzimidazole moieties has been successfully designed and synthesized. Through the judicious choice of the N-heterocycles in the cyclometalating ligand and the tailor-made carbazole moieties, maximum photoluminescence quantum yields of 0.52 and 0.39 have been realized in the green- and sky-blue-emitting complexes, respectively. Solution-processed and vacuum-deposited organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) based on the benzimidazole-containing complexes have been prepared. The sky-blue-emitting device shows an emission peaking at 484 nm with a narrow full-width at half-maximum of 57 nm (2244 cm(-1) ), demonstrating the potential of this class of complexes in the application of OLEDs with high color purity. In addition, high maximum external quantum efficiencies of 12.3 % and a long operational half-lifetime of over 5300 h at 100 cd m(-2) have been achieved in the vacuum-deposited green-emitting devices.