A novel structural approach to solution-processable heteroleptic iridium(III) complexes is presented. On the basis of 2-arylbenzo[d]thiazole cyclometalating main ligands and picolinic acid (pic) and acetylacetone (acac) ancillary ligands six new yellow or orange emitting materials were obtained using attached 1,1,1-triphenylmethylpentane substituents as aggregation preventing and solubility enhancing functional fragments. The obtained compounds show high photoluminescence quantum yield values in the range of 0.64 to 0.90. OLEDs with a spin-coated emissive layer were successfully prepared, with the highest achieved external quantum efficiency of 7.9%, current efficiency of 12.4 cd A−1 and power efficiency of 7.8 lm W−1, measured at luminance 6000 cd m−2. Maximal device brightness of 17 451 cd m−2 was attained.
