Showa Denko (SDK) will shortly be offering mass produced dipivaloylmethanate (DPM) metal complexes after developing technology to produce such materials. DP< Metal complexes are used in metal-organic chemical vapour deposition processes for the production of semiconductors and display panels.

DPM metal complexes have several advantages of other metal-organic compounds. These include:

· Higher vapour pressure, meaning they vapourise at lower temperatures (~200°C)

· They decompose easily in the presence of oxygen to form metal oxide films

· Metal oxides are formed efficiently.

Previously DPM metal complexes have been expensive to use due to the lack of volume production. This problem has now been overcome, and these materials are set to be more widely exploited. The technology to produce large volumes of DPM metal complexes uses chelating agents such as EDTA and biodegradable GLDA.

Current production lines will see SDK producing complexes of hafnium, zirconium, ruthenium, copper, yttrium, barium, lanthanum, terbium, europium and thallium. Uses of these materials are expected to come mainly from electronic applications such as flat panel display (both PDP and FED), and thin ferroelectric, insulating and electrode films for semiconducting devices.