Article
Determining whether metals nucleate homogeneously on graphite: A case study with copper
Physical Review B
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
11-1-2014
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevB.90.195406
Abstract
We observe that Cu clusters grow on surface terraces of graphite as a result of physical vapor deposition in ultrahigh vacuum. We show that the observation is incompatible with a variety of models incorporating homogeneous nucleation and calculations of atomic-scale energetics. An alternative explanation, ion-mediated heterogeneous nucleation, is proposed and validated, both with theory and experiment. This serves as a case study in identifying when and whether the simple, common observation of metal clusters on carbon-rich surfaces can be interpreted in terms of homogeneous nucleation. We describe a general approach for making system-specific and laboratory-specific predictions.
Copyright Owner
American Physical Society
Copyright Date
2014
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
David Victor Appy, Huaping Lei, Yong Han, Cai-Zhuang Wang, et al.. "Determining whether metals nucleate homogeneously on graphite: A case study with copper" Physical Review B Vol. 90 Iss. 19 (2014) p. 195406-1 - 195406-6 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/patricia_thiel/125/
This article is from Physical Review B 90 (2014): 195406, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevB.90.195406. Posted with permission.