Nickel Pyrrolide Complexes as Precursors for the Chemical Vapor Deposition of Metallic Thin Films of Nickel

We report here the synthesis of a novel class of precursors for the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of thin films of metallic, face-centered cubic (fcc) nickel. The complexes are simple and inexpensive to synthesize, possess high volatility (vapor pressure = 0.1 Torr at 40 °C), and enable rapid deposition rates of nickel under CVD conditions (up to 6.5 nm/min at 250 °C). We show that the deposited nickel films have high elemental purity (>99 at%), resistivity comparable to bulk nickel (7-23 μΩ·cm <i>cf</i>. 6.93 μΩ·cm), exhibit shallow surface features (<i>ca</i>. ± 10 nm), and very low surface roughness (RMS = 2.72 nm). These data compare favorably with those of the current state-of-the-art metallic nickel CVD precursors.