High‐Efficiency and Long‐Lifetime Near‐Infrared OLEDs Based on Iridium Complexes with Enhanced Horizontal Emitting Dipole Orientation

AbstractHigh‐efficiency and long‐lifetime near‐infrared (NIR) organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) are rarely reported. Herein, three efficient NIR Ir(III) complexes 1–3 are developed with specially designed cyclometallated ligands based on pyrido[3,4‐b]pyrazine and oriented substitutions along the Ir─N bond axis. Electron‐deficient pyrazine ring effectively stabilizes LUMO energy, leading to significant emission bathochromic shift. Importantly, for complexes 2 and 3, oriented substitutions along the direction of the Ir─N bond axis considerably enhance the horizontal emitting dipole orientation ratio up to 90%. Their OLEDs demonstrate high maximum external quantum efficiencies (EQEs), negligible efficiency roll‐offs, superior radiance, and long lifetimes. The maximum EQEs and radiances of devices are 9.84% and 158 W Sr−1 m−2 at 725 nm for 1, 6.98% and 14.03 W Sr−1 m−2 at 760 nm for 2, and 12.49% and 18.94 W Sr−1 m−2 at 735 nm for 3, respectively. The device lifetime LT97 at 10 mA cm−2 is 453 h for complex 2, which sets a champion lifetime for NIR‐OLEDs. This work demonstrates that pyrido[3,4‐b]pyrazine is a desired building block for robust NIR emitting Ir(III) complexes, providing a superior paradigm to combine high efficiency, negligible roll‐off, and long device lifetime simultaneously toward practical applications.