Factors controlling material deposition in the CVD of nickel sulfides, selenides or phosphides from dichalcogenoimidodiphosphinato complexes: deposition, spectroscopic and computational studies

The series of nickel dichalcogenoimidodiphosphinates Ni (i) Pr (2) P (X1) NP (X2) (i) Pr (2) (2): X1 = S, X2 = Se (1), X1 = X2 = S (2), and X1 = X2 = Se (3) have been successfully used as single-source precursors (SSPs) to deposit thin films of nickel sulfide, selenide or phosphide; the material deposited depended on both temperature and method used for the deposition. Aerosol-assisted (AA) chemical vapour deposition (CVD) and low-pressure (LP) CVD were used. The as-deposited films were characterised by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). A variety of phases including: Ni (2) P, Ni (0. 85) Se and NiS (1. 03) were deposited under different conditions. The mechanism of decomposition to the phosphide, selenide, or sulfide was studied by pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS) and modelled by density functional theory (DFT).