The market for printed, organic and flexible electronics is predicted to be worth $73 billion in 2027. Such devices include solar cells (SCs), radio frequency identification (RFID) antennas and organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), which are becoming ever more prevalent in society. As such, there is a push from market leaders for the fabrication of electronics on large scales, incorporating processes that are material-, energy- and time- efficient. One potential method of achieving this is by using metal organic decomposition (MOD) inks, which contain complexes with an oxidised metal centre, that can be subsequently reduced to form thin conductive metallic coatings. To date, there has been little research into aluminium MOD ink chemistry, with previous work focussing only on a few different amine-stabilised aluminium hydride compounds to deposit aluminium metal. This work presents a more synthetically driven approach to aluminium precursor development using well-known β-ketoimine and β-diketimine compounds as ligands. Although, complexes containing such ligands with bulky N-substituents are common in the literature due to their steric bulk protecting the Al centre, this research presents several novel non-bulky analogues. which are also examples of very rare Al structural motifs (Figure 1). Novel complexes have been fully characterised by a range of techniques including SCXRD, NMR, MS and EA. Additionally, the thermal decomposition of these novel precursors has been investigated using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) to gauge their suitability as MOD precursors. Also, using thermal analysis data, we can analyse trends such that better performing precursors (those that decompose more cleanly and at lower temperature, whilst maintaining good stability) containing different ligand systems can be predicted and subsequently synthesised.

Designer aluminium compounds for use as precursors in low temperature metal coatings

2019 Fall National Meeting

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