Ethyl and amide zinc thioureides [L1ZnEt]2 (1), [L1*ZnEt]2 (2) and [L1Zn(N(SiMe3)2)]2 (3) have been synthesised from the equimolar reaction of thiourea ligands (HL1 = iPrN(H)CSNMe2 and HL1* = PhN(H)CSNMe2) with diethyl zinc and zinc...

We report the first solution based deposition of zinc oxysulfide, Zn(O,S), thin films via aerosol-assisted chemical vapour deposition (AACVD) facilitated by the use of a specifically designed precursor: [Zn 8 (SOCCH 3 ) 12 S 2 ] (1). This buffer layer material, synthesised from the dual source AACVD reaction of 1 with ZnEt 2 and MeOH was analysed via X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Hall effect measurements and UV/vis spectroscopy. The film was highly transparent (490%), conductive (r = 0.02998 O cm) and had a high charge carrier concentration (1.36 Â 10 19 cm À3 ), making it a good contendor as a buffer layer in thin film photovoltaics. In an additional study, large area films were deposited and mapped to correlate compositional variation to optoelectronic properties.

A set of heteroleptic ethyl zinc β-amidoenoates (1, 2) and β-ketoiminates (3) of the form [LZnEt]2 with varying steric bulk have been synthesised via the reaction of diethylzinc with β-aminoenoate ligands HL1 and HL2 and β-ketoimine HL3. These complexes have been characterised via 1H and 13C NMR, mass spectrometry and single-crystal X-ray diffraction, which unambiguously determined all three structures as dimeric species in the solid state. We observe the unusual dimerisation of 1 and 2 through coordination of the central zinc atom to the methine carbon of the second monomer, which gives these complexes high reactivity. The thermal properties of complex 3 are explored via thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), to investigate their potential as single-source precursors to zinc oxide, which shows that 3 has a significantly lower decomposition temperature as compared to its bis-ligated counterpart [Zn(L3)2], which gives 3 promise as a single-source precursor to zinc oxide.

Amidoenoate complexes of Al and Ga have been synthesised and their coordination chemistry studied in relation to precursor stability. A selection of the complexes were used in aerosol assisted CVD to deposit thin films of Al2O3 and Ga2O3.