AVS 63rd International Symposium & Exhibition
    Surface Science Thursday Sessions
       Session SS+AS-ThA

Paper SS+AS-ThA6
A Tribute to John T. Yates Jr. and His Pioneering Work with Graphitic Surfaces (Invited Talk)

Thursday, November 10, 2016, 4:00 pm, Room 103C

Session: Celebrating a Life in Surface Science: A Symposium in Honor of JOHN T. YATES, JR.
Presenter: Patricia A. Thiel, Ames Laboratory
Correspondent: Click to Email
John T. Yates, Jr. directed pioneering work on graphitic surfaces. In one case, he and his group prepared graphene on SiC surfaces long before graphene was popularized. In another case, they developed a method to induce surface intercalation of Cs at a graphite surface. In this talk, I will review his contributions and describe the ways in which his work has inspired some of my own. For instance, we have studied adsorption, nucleation, growth, and reaction of dysprosium (Dy) on the basal plane of graphite, and the way that these phenomena are influenced by surface defects. Dysprosium islands nucleate homogeneously on terraces at room temperature. With increasing temperature the shape changes, with islands becoming taller and more facetted. At still higher temperature, Dy reactions with graphite to form carbide. Using the technique developed by John and his group, we can also induce surface intercalation at elevated temperature. We show that this surface intercalation differs significantly from bulk intercalation.