Organic electronics such as organic light emitting diodes, organic photovoltaics, organic field effect transistors begin to replace classically used technology. This is due to their tailorability, possibility of smaller and flexible devices, and new functionalities. These devices are light weight and consume less power. Although, these qualities are beneficial, there are major drawbacks to this technology. Commercially available devices exceed the cost of conventional due to instability and short lifetimes of organic materials, which results in costly manufacturing and assembling. Also, many devices employ heavy metals and rare-earth metals, which impose environmental challenges. Hexacoordinate silicon based complexes with conjugated pincer ligands will have improved electronic, optical, and chemical properties for wide-scale application in organic electronic devices. The hexacoordinate silicon center enforces planarity of the pincer ligand, leading to extended, conjugation and improved optical properties compared to the free ligand alone. Also, the tridentate nature of the pincer ligand would lead to a more stable product less stable to hydrolysis than existing state-of-the-art materials such as Alq3. In this work a new generation of electron and hole transport, and electroluminescent materials were synthesized, characterized and tested in prototype devices.In this work, complexes with hexacoordinate silicon complexes with dianionic pincer ligands, Si(pincer)2, motif were tested. All of the synthetic analogs were found to be air/moisture stable and fluorescent in solution and solid state. Thin films of the complexes can be grown using vacuum deposition with high uniformity. The charge carrier mobilities of Si(pincer)2 complexes have been measured and demonstrated that Si(pincer)2 complexes are efficient electron and hole transport layers with electron mobilities comparable to commercially available alternatives. Si(pincer)2 complexes have been successfully embedded into prototype OLEDs and OPVs, which confirms that hexacoordinate silicon complexes are attractive candidates for organic electronic applications.
