Nucleation Mechanisms of Self-Assembled Physisorbed Monolayers on Graphite

Coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations are employed to obtain a detailed view of the formation of long-range ordered lamellar structures of physisorbed self-assembling long functionalized alkanes on graphite. During the self-assembly, two processes take place: Langmuir preferential adsorption and rearrangement on the surface. The rearrangement starts with nucleation, in which molecules create an ordered domain. The nucleation mechanism is...