With increasing demand in the microelectronic industry to achieve cheaper, more sophisticated devices, the requirement for a simpler method of producing transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) has received much attention. Furthermore printed electronics, such as organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), photovoltaics and radio frequency identification (RFIDs) devices all face key scientific challenges, namely the design and synthesis of metal precursors such that they can be used to form functional materials. Recently our investigation into the use of different ligands (R groups), to produce unsymmetrical copper compounds of the type [Cu(R’)(R’’)]4 has shown great promise. These compounds have been characterised by single crystal XRD and through decompositional profiling have been shown to have significantly lower thermal conversion temperatures, when compared to commercially available precursors such as [Cu(acac)2] or [Cu(thd)2]. These multipurpose compounds have shown promise in formulation as metal inks, forming copper tracks on plastic substrates such as polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) at low temperatures (&lt; 150 °C). These precursors are synthesised and isolated as crystalline powders, and as such have impressive shelf lives, especially when compared to the state-of-the-art precursor inks that are formed in situ and quickly decompose. To highlight the versatility of these precursors recent studies have also shown compounds of the type [Cu(R’)(R’’)]4 to be excellent chemical vapour deposition (CVD) precursors, forming large conformal films of copper. Traditionally, formation of the unwanted oxides of copper is a stumbling block in copper thin film synthesis, however using the aerosol assisted (AA)CVD method, precursors decomposed cleanly to copper, and have been fully characterised using XRD, XPS, EDX and SEM. Furthermore these precursors show promise for use as dopants in the synthesis of TCO materials.

Designer copper precursors and their use in functional materials

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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