Metalorganics
Metalorganic compounds (jargon: metalorganics, metallo-organics) are a class of chemical compounds that contain metals and organic ligands. Metalorganic compounds are used extensively in materials science in applications such as metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy (MOVPE or MOCVD) or sol-gel processing using alkoxides. Usually, metalorganic compounds are defined to exclude species with direct metal-carbon bonds, which are classified as organometallic compounds, but definitions vary between chemistry and materials science areas.
Applications include the manufacture of compound semiconductors and Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) in silicon-based semiconductors. Ultrapure metalorganics are required for many optoelectronic and microelectronic applications (e.g., MOCVD and ALD), with highest purity of the order of 99.9999% ("six nines") or greater. These ultrapure metalorganic sources require special manufacturing routes to keep impurity levels below parts per billion (ppb) or even parts per trillion (ppt) levels. The safety, health and environment related aspects of metalorganics are discussed in Product Safety Assessment reports [1] available in electronics industry.
The vapour pressure of a metalorganic precursor is a crucial parameter that governs the concentrations of metalorganic precursors entering the reactor, and subsequently the rate of deposition in MOVPE process.[2][3]