Collaborative Research: Photolytic CVD Processes for Thermally Sensitive Substrates

非技术总结：使用塑料和其他柔性材料的下一代电子设备在医学、可持续能源和信息技术方面具有革命性社会效益的潜力。开发可靠的、广泛适用的方法，将金属应用于热敏材料，如有机和聚合物薄膜，将是生产这些设备的重要一步。这个项目正在开发一种方法，利用光作为能源来驱动热敏材料上金属触点的放置。由于这种金属可以应用在图案上，这种方法最终可以用于柔性电子产品的印刷电路。参与这项研究为研究生提供了在学术或工业生涯中有价值的技术和协作技能。本科研究人员对提议的工作做出了重大贡献，这鼓励他们继续攻读物理科学和工程方面的研究生教育。为了向公众传达科学的兴奋，该项目的参与者参与了化学和基于化学的纳米技术的公众宣传。技术概述：该项目正在开发光解化学气相沉积（CVD）工艺，用于将金属选择性沉积在热敏材料上，如有机薄膜。从能量收集到传感到有机/分子电子学，稳定金属与有机薄膜接触的可靠形成对许多技术至关重要。光辅助低温CVD的发展将通过使分子组装集成到复杂器件中来推进有机电子学的最新技术。在这个合作项目中，设计和合成钌、铂和金配合物作为光敏CVD前体，随后进行筛选过程，包括鉴定主要光过程，确定配体损失的量子产率，阐明热分解步骤，并模拟与底物表面官能团的反应性。以自组装单层（SAMs）为模型衬底体系，进行了光解化学气相沉积实验。SAMs被用作底物，因为它们具有高度组织化的结构，具有均匀密度的末端有机官能团，这将允许对前体-分子相互作用进行定量研究。此外，萨姆可以很容易地图案化，以产生多功能表面，这是用来确定沉积反应的选择性。

Non-Technical Summary:Next-generation electronic devices using plastics and other flexible materials have the potential for revolutionary societal benefits in medicine, sustainable energy and information technology. Development of reliable, widely applicable methods to apply metals to heat-sensitive materials such as organic and polymer thin films will be an important step in the production of these devices. This project is developing methods to use light as an energy source to drive placement of metal contacts on heat-sensitive materials. Because the metal can be applied in patterns, the method could eventually be used to print circuits on flexible electronics. Participation in this research provides graduate students with technical and collaborative skills valuable in either academic or industrial careers. Undergraduate researchers contribute significantly to the proposed work, which encourages them to pursue graduate education in the physical sciences and engineering. To communicate the excitement of science to the general public, participants in the project are involved in public outreach on chemistry and chemistry-based nanotechnology.Technical Summary:This project is developing photolytic chemical vapor deposition (CVD) processes for the selective deposition of metals onto thermally sensitive materials, such as organic thin films. The reliable formation of stable metallic contacts to organic thin films is critical to many technologies from energy harvesting to sensing to organic/molecular electronics. The development of photoassisted low temperature CVD will advance the state-of-the-art in organic electronics by enabling the integration of molecular assemblies into complex devices. In this collaborative project, design and synthesis of ruthenium, platinum and gold complexes as photosensitive CVD precursors is followed by a screening process involving identification of the primary photoprocess, determination of the quantum yield for ligand loss, elucidation of thermal decomposition steps, and modeling reactivity with functional groups on the substrate surface. Promising precursor complexes are subjected to photolytic chemical vapor deposition experiments with self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) as model substrate systems. SAMs are used as the substrates because they have highly organized structures with a uniform density of terminal organic functional groups that will allow the quantitative investigation of the precursor-molecule interactions. Further, SAMs can be easily patterned to produce multifunctional surfaces, which are used to determine the selectivity of the deposition reactions.