Kinetic Monte Carlo model of epitaxial graphene growth

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.