Highly efficient blue organic light-emitting diodes based on carbene-metal-amides

Carbene-metal-amide type photoemitters based on CF$_3$-substituted carbazolate ligands show sky-blue to deep-blue photoluminescence from charge-transfer excited states. They are suitable for incorporation into organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) by thermal vapour deposition techniques, either embedded within a high-triplet-energy host, or used host-free. We report high-efficiency OLEDs with emission ranging from yellow to blue (Commission Internationale de l'\'Eclairage (CIE) coordinates from [0.35, 0.53] to [0.17, 0.17]). The latter show a peak electroluminescence external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 20.9 $\%$ in a polar host. We observe that the relative energies of CT and $^{3}$LE states influence the performance of deep-blue emission from carbene-metal-amide materials. We report prototype host-free blue devices with peak external quantum efficiency of 17.3 $\%$, which maintain high performance at brightness levels of 100 cd m$^{-2}$.