The electron ionisation mass spectrometric behaviour of a new series of hafnocene and zirconocene dialcoholates is discussed. Deprotonated moieties of borneol and fenchyl alcohol were used as '-ligands. These data are also compared to those of mass-analysed ion kinetic energy spectroscopy of the molecular ions. Fragmentation patterns of the complexes in question give relevant information on their gas-phase behaviour and also on the influence of the ligand structure on the decomposition pathways. The complexes in question appear to be promising metal-organic chemical vapour decomposition precursors. Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 13 November 1998; Revised 2 December 1998; Accepted 3 December 1998 Recently the method of metal-organic chemical vapour deposition (CVD) has attracted much attention as a promising tool for obtaining new functional materials possessing valuable properties. A choice of suitable volatile and thermally stable organometallic precursors for the above technique is very important, 1 hence the particular efforts of many researchers has been concentrated on the correlation between the structure of the precursor and composition of final products to be obtained. From this point of view, mass spectrometry is one of the most informative methods. Its combination with mass-analysed ion kinetic energy (MIKE) spectroscopy in particular gives the possibility to reveal a fragmentation pattern of a compound under investigation which reasonably corresponds to that realised upon thermal decomposition. In turn, such information enables us to control the CVD processes and to obtain functional films with predictable composition.Oxides and carbides of zirconium and hafnium are well known as the best refractory coatings, and thus a search for volatile CVD precursors containing these metals, for example their co-ordination compounds, is always worthwhile. Traditionally, this role has been played by Zr or Hf tetraalkyls, tetraalcoholates, b-diketonates and, to a lesser extent, by dichlorides of zirconocene or hafnocene.2 The latter are of special interest to us due to a possibility to enhance considerably their volatility and thermal stability by substitution of hard donor chloro ligands by '-ligands containing voluminous organic frameworks, able to shield effectively the centre of coordination from interactions with neighbouring molecules. 5,6 ) and tricyclic (adamantanols 7 ) alcoholato ligands. Our mass spectrometric investigations show that the compounds in question are interesting and promising CVD precursors, in particular the metallocene derivatives of bicyclo[2.2.1]heptanols. The present paper is devoted to the investigation of the mass spectrometric behaviour of some complexes containing substituted trimethylbicyclo[2.2.1]-heptane moieties.
EXPERIMENTALAll complexes were synthesised and purified by procedures developed by us and described in detail elsewhere.3,8 For convenience we use the following acronyms for the alcohols: HOBL for borneol (1,7,7-trimethylbicyclo[2.2.1]-heptan-2-ol)...