Regensburg 2019 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 7: Graphene I: Structure and Growth (joint session O/TT)

O 7.1: Invited Talk

Monday, April 1, 2019, 10:30–11:00, H24

Real-time imaging of adatom-promoted graphene growth on nickel — •Laerte L. Patera — Department of Physics, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy — IOM-CNR - TASC Laboratory, Basovizza, 34149 Trieste, Italy — Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, University of Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany

Single adatoms are expected to participate in many processes and chemical reactions occurring at solid surfaces. We demonstrate, both experimentally and theoretically, the catalytic role played by single metal adatoms during the graphene growth on Ni(111). The catalytic action of individual Ni atoms at the edges of a growing graphene flake was directly captured by scanning tunneling microscopy imaging at video-rate, allowing the precise determination of the atomic structure of reaction intermediates in the ms time-scale. Force field molecular dynamics and density functional theory calculations rationalize the experimental observations. Our results unveil the mechanism governing the activity of a single-atom catalyst at work [1].

[1] L. L. Patera et al., Science 359, 1243-1246 (2018)