Study of the Thermal Properties of Pr(III) Precursors and Their Implementation in the MOCVD Growth of Praseodymium Oxide Films

In the present work,we have synthesized and investigated the mass transport properties of a new praseodymium precursor,Pr(hfa)3.diglyme [(H-hfa = 1,1,5,5-hexafluoro-2,4-pentandione,diglyme = CH3O(CH2CH2O)2CH3)],and of an alternative fluorine-free precursor,Pr(tmhd)3,[(H-tmhd = 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-3,5-heptanedione)]. Both praseodymium b-diketonate precursors have been fully characterized and their mass tran sport properties have been analyzed and compared. In particular,their thermal properties have been investigated in terms of temperature dependencies of the saturated vapor pressure and thermodynamic parameters of the vaporization process. The growth of praseodymium oxide films on Si(100) substrates has been carried out as an initial step to evaluate the potentiality of the MOCVD technique to fabricate this material for CMOS and/or MIM device structures.