Sector(s): Electronics, Sensors & Photonics, Engineering & Manufacturing, Materials
About Opportunity:
Roll-to-roll printing of plastic electronics from solution promises to revolutionise the manufacturing of luminaires, offering a cheap and scalable method of fabricating high-efficiency light sources. White light displays are the holy grail of this endeavour and require efficient red, green and blue emitters. So far, red and green emitters using iridium-based complexes have been synthesised, but efficient and stable blue light emitter design is still a challenge in the industry. To tackle this, we have designed deep-blue emitting cationic iridium complexes that are unprecedentedly bright. A tethering strategy, where the distal components of the ligand scaffold are rigidly linked together, drastically enhances the brightness of these emitters while simultaneously invoking a deep blue colour due to the ligand’s strong electron donating capabilities.
Our rigidifying strategy differs from typical strategies that use multi-dentate ligands, which are synthetically challenging to access; our strategy uses established straightforward protocols to access these complexes.
The invention is primarily suited for OLED or LEEC application for visual display and lighting applications. Due to the charged phosphorescent nature of the emitter, applications relating to bio-imaging, analyte detection and oxygen sensing are also feasible.