Kinetic Monte Carlo model of epitaxial graphene growth

TL;DR

This paper develops a kinetic Monte Carlo model for epitaxial graphene growth, incorporating intermediate carbon clusters to explain various experimental observations related to nucleation and island growth.

Contribution

It introduces a novel kinetic Monte Carlo model that includes intermediate carbon clusters, providing a comprehensive explanation of experimental data on graphene epitaxial growth.

Findings

Cluster-mediated growth mechanism explained

Temperature dependence of nucleation and island density modeled

Simulation matches experimental observations

Abstract

In this thesis we present a kinetic Monte Carlo model for the description of epitaxial graphene growth. Experimental results suggest a growth mechanism by which clusters of 5 carbon atoms are an intermediate species necessary for nucleation and island growth. This model is proposed by experimentally studying the velocity of growth of islands which is a highly nonlinear function of adatom concentration. In our simulation we incorporate this intermediate species and show that it can explain all other experimental observations: the temperature dependence of the adatom nucleation density, the equilibrium adatom density and the temperature dependence of the equilibrium island density. All these processes are described only by the kinematics of the system.