Desorption of n-alkanes from graphene: a van der Waals density functional study

A recent study of temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) measurements of small linear alkane molecules (n-alkanes, with formula CNH2N+2) from C(0001) deposited on Pt(111) shows a linear relationship of the desorption energy with increasing n-alkane chain length N. We here present a van der Waals density functional study of the desorption barrier energy of the ten smallest n-alkanes (of carbon chain length N = 1–10) from graphene. We find linear scaling with N, including a non-zero intercept with the energy axis, i.e. an offset at the extrapolation to N = 0. This calculated offset is quantitatively similar to the results of the TPD measurements. From further calculations of the polyethylene polymer we offer a suggestion for the origin of the offset.