Evidence for Strong Mixing Between the LC and MLCT Excited States in Some Heteroleptic Iridium (III) Complexes

The synthesis, structure and photophysical properties of series of new luminescent cyclometalated Iridium (III) complexes are reported. The cyclometalated ligand used here is 2-aryl imidazole and the auxiliary ligand is acetyl acetone (acac). The crystal structure of the complex (dmdpi)₂Ir(acac) (5) show that the Iridium(III) ion resides in a distorted octahedral environment. All complexes exhibit bright photoluminescence (PL) at room temperature and (fpdmdmpi)₂Ir(acac) 4 has a high solution PL quantum efficiency of 0.56. The role played by electron releasing and electron withdrawing substituents of the 2-arylimidazole ligands towards the stability of HOMO and how the substituent influences the luminescent behaviour are discussed. Furthermore those substituents have effect on the contribution to mixing between ³(π-π*) and ³(MLCT) for the lowest excited states.