Corrosion of Late- and Post-Transition Metals into Metal–Organic Chalcogenolates and Implications for Nanodevice Architectures

Metal chalcogenide compounds have attracted interest as materials for next-generation semiconductors, catalysts, and device architectures. Hybrid compounds containing both a metal chalcogenide architecture and a supporting organic lattice combine the interesting structural and electronic properties of the material class with a configurable hybrid component that can lead to a wide range of tailorable materials. However, many of the methods available for preparing inorganic coordination polymers in this class require specialized solution-phase chemical preparations that are incompatible with solid-state fabrication techniques. Here, we prepare metal–organic chalcogenolates (MOChas) of copper, indium, lead, and tin from benzeneselenol or benzenethiol directly from the organochalcogen and corresponding metal in a tube furnace at a relatively modest temperature. Scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction confirmed the conversion of the precursors to crystalline MOChas. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy was used to investigate the chemical bonding for each of the materials and provides insight into the elemental composition of the synthesized compounds. This straightforward approach for preparing crystalline hybrid materials may be generalizable for the preparation of a wide variety of coordination compounds and complexes in form factors useful for subsequent development of device architectures.