Dissociative electron attachment to gold(i) based compounds: 4,5-dichloro 1,3-diethyl imidazolylidene trifluoromethyl gold(i)

TL;DR

This paper investigates the properties of a novel gold(i) precursor compound for nanostructure deposition and radiation therapy, focusing on its structural stability, reactivity, and potential for high-purity applications.

Contribution

It introduces a new gold(i) compound tailored for FEBID and radiation therapy, analyzing its structural behavior and suitability for high-purity nanostructure fabrication.

Findings

The compound shows structural changes with temperature, vacuum, and light.

It has lower C contamination in FEBID structures.

C-N and C-Cl bonds influence purification steps.

Abstract

With the use of proton-NMR and powder XRD (XRPD) studies, the suitability of specific Au FEBID precursors has been investigated to low electron energy, structure, excited states and resonances, structural crystal modifications, flexibility, and vaporization level. Uniquely designed precursor to meet the needs of focused electron beam induced deposition (FEBID) at the nanostructure level, the 4,5-dichloro 1,3-diethyl imidazolylidene trifluoromethyl gold(i) is a compound that proves its capability to create high purity structures, and its growing importance between other AuImx and AuClnB (where x, n are the number of radicals, B = CH, CH3 or Br) compounds in the radiation cancer therapy increases the efforts to design more suitable bonds in processes of SEM deposition and in gas-phase studies. The investigation done to its powder shape using the XRPD XPERT3 Panalytical diffractometer based on CoK{\alpha} lines show changes to its structure with temperature, level of vacuum, and light; the sensitivity of this compound makes it highly interesting to radiation research in particular. Used for FEBID, through its smaller number of C, H, and O atoms has lower levels of C contamination in the structures and on the surface, but it replaces these bonds with C-Cl and C-N bonds that have a lower bond breaking energy but still needing an extra purification step in the deposition process, whether is H2O, O2 or H jets.