Hindawi Publishing Corporation Advances in Materials Science and Engineering Volume 2012, Article ID 809028, 9 pages doi:10.1155/2012/809028 Research Article Reactive Chemical Vapor Deposition Method as New Approach for Obtaining Electroluminescent Thin Film Materials Valentina V. Utochnikova, 1, 2 Oxana V. Kotova, 1, 3 Andrey A. Vaschenko, 2 Leonid S. Lepnev, 2 Alexei G. Vitukhnovsky, 2 and Natalia P. Kuzmina 1 1 Laboratory of Chemistry of Coordination Compounds, Chemistry Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1-3 Leninskie Gory, 119991 Moscow, Russia 2 Luminescence Division, Optical Department, Lebedev Physical Institute, 53 Leninsky Prosp., 119991 Moscow, Russia 3 School of Chemistry, Centre for Synthesis and Chemical Biology, Trinity College Dublin, College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland Correspondence should be addressed to Valentina V. Utochnikova, valentina.utochnikova@gmail.com Received 21 March 2012; Revised 1 May 2012; Accepted 8 May 2012 Academic Editor: Yong Qiu Copyright © 2012 Valentina V. Utochnikova et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The new reactive chemical vapor deposition (RCVD) method has been proposed for thin film deposition of luminescent non- volatile lanthanide aromatic carboxylates. This method is based on metathesis reaction between the vapors of volatile lanthanide dipivaloylmethanate (Ln(dpm) 3 ) and carboxylic acid (HCarb orH 2 Carb ′ ) and was successfully used in case of HCarb. Advantages of the method were demonstrated on example of terbium benzoate (Tb(bz) 3 ) and o-phenoxybenzoate thin films, and Tb(bz) 3 thin films were successfully examined in the OLED with the following structure glass/ITO/PEDOT:PSS/TPD/Tb(bz) 3 /Ca/Al. Electroluminescence spectra of Tb(bz) 3 showed only typical luminescent bands, originated from transitions of the terbium ion. Method peculiarities for deposition of compounds of dibasic acids H 2 Carb ′ are established on example of terbium and europium terephtalates and europium 2,6-naphtalenedicarboxylate. 1. Introduction A search for new electroluminescent (EL) materials for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) is still an actual challenge for chemists. The solution of it means not only finding a compound which fits the EL material require- ments but also the right choice or creation of a technique providing the transformation of such precursors into the thin films of high smoothness and low thickness. This can be demonstrated on examples of lanthanide coordination compounds which are well-known potential luminescent materials [1–5]. However, it is not that simple to find among them the luminescent lanthanide coordination com- pound, which demonstrates simultaneously high thermal and UV stability, bright luminescence, while being volatile or possesses high solubility to deposit thin film of high quality by physical methods from gas phase or solutions. In case of highly volatile β-diketonates the obvious physical deposition technique allows to obtain thin films of high quality, and their luminescence efficiency can be increased by variation of the substituents in ligands. However these compounds do not exhibit required UV stability. A different situation arises from lanthanide aromatic carboxylates which show high UV, thermal, and chemical stability, as well as high luminescence efficiency, which can reach 100% in case of Tb(bz) 3 [6–9], but for these compounds the choice for the film deposition technique among known methods appears rather impossible. The aromatic carboxylates form extremely rigid 3D networks [10–12], which make them nonvolatile and poorly soluble in organic solvents that complicate deposition of their thin films from gas phase or solution and cause the necessity for search or development of the new methods. Thus, we have proposed the reactive chemical vapor deposition (RCVD) technique for thin films of nonvolatile luminescent lanthanide aromatic carboxylates (HCarb—aromatic monocarboxylic acid) [13, 14].