A special reactor coupled with a high‐temperature mass spectrometer for the investigation of the vaporization and cracking of organometallic compounds

A special reactor coupled to a high‐temperature mass spectrometer was specifically designed for the study of vaporization and thermal cracking of organometallic precursors. This reactor has two kinds of settings. One is a single Knudsen effusion cell which enables the analysis of the composition of saturated vapors and the determination of the partial pressure of each gaseous molecule in equilibrium with its condensed phase. This cell is an evaporation/sublimation cell (operating from 243 to 473 K), which can be tightly closed – like a vacuum chamber – in order to protect organometallic compounds against moisture and atmospheric components. This cell can be independently weighed usefully to evaluate the equilibrium vapor pressures of the sample using the mass‐loss method. During experiments, the effusion aperture is externally opened for direct mass spectrometric measurements. The other setting dedicated to the study of thermal decomposition of gaseous molecules consists of a set of tandem cells: the previously described Knudsen cell and a cracking cell (operating from 293 to 973 K). Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.