Incorporation of Fluorene and Its Heterocyclic Spiro Derivatives to Realize High-Performance and Stable Sky-Blue-Emitting Arylgold(III) Complexes

A series of arylgold(III) complexes of tridentate diphenylpyridine ligand incorporated with fluorene and its heterocyclic spiro derivatives, spiro[fluorene-9,9′-xanthene] and spiro[acridine-9,9′-fluorene], as auxiliary ligands has been prepared. This class of complexes exhibits high decomposition temperatures of up to 387 °C, excellent film morphologies in solid-state thin films with a root-mean-square roughness smaller than 0.20 nm, as well as high photoluminescence quantum yields of up to 0.72 in solid-state thin films. Solution-processed organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) fabricated from this series of complexes as dopants show intense electroluminescence in the sky-blue region with maximum external quantum efficiencies of 10.0%. Taking advantage of their high thermal stability, vacuum-deposited OLEDs have also been fabricated and satisfactory operational lifetimes of ∼300 h have been recorded.