Effects of surface impurities on epitaxial graphene growth

The focus of this report is to explore the large scale growth of graphene on Ru(0 0 0 1) and verify the possible effects of crystallographic defects and impurities in the quality of the synthesized material. After a Low Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition (LP-CVD) process we obtained a graphene film accompanied by other types of graphitic structures. Impurities on the ruthenium surface behaved as nucleation sites in the formation of carbon islands several micrometers wide. The morphological structure of these islands is constituted by carbon discs with diameters in the range of few to several hundred nanometers and thicknesses always below 1 nm.