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Controllable synthesis of defect-free graphene is crucial for applications since the properties of graphene are highly sensitive to any deviations from the crystalline lattice. We focus here on the emerging use of liquid Cu catalysts, which have high potential for fast and efficient industrial-scale production of high-quality graphene. The interface between graphene and liquid Cu is studied using force field and ab initio molecular dynamics, revealing a complete or partial embedding of finite-sized flakes. By analyzing flakes of different sizes, we find that the size-dependence of the embedding can be rationalized based on the energy cost of embedding vs bending the graphene flake. The embedding itself is driven by the formation of covalent bonds between the under-coordinated edge C atoms and the liquid Cu surface, which is accompanied by a significant charge transfer. In contrast, the central flake atoms are located around or slightly above 3 Å from the liquid Cu surface and exhibit weak van der Waals-bonding and much lower charge transfer. The structural and electronic properties of the embedded state revealed in our work provide the atomic-scale information needed to develop effective models to explain the special growth observed in experiments where various interesting phenomena such as flake self-assembly and rotational alignment, high growth speeds, and low defect densities in the final graphene product have been observed.

In computer simulations of solvation effects on chemical reactions, continuum modeling techniques regain popularity as a way to efficiently circumvent an otherwise costly sampling of solvent degrees of freedom. As effective techniques, such implicit solvation models always depend on a number of parameters that need to be determined earlier. In the past, the focus lay mostly on an accurate parametrization of water models. Yet, non-aqueous solvents have recently attracted increasing attention, in particular, for the design of battery materials. To this end, we present a systematic parametrization protocol for the Self-Consistent Continuum Solvation (SCCS) model resulting in optimized parameters for 67 non-aqueous solvents. Our parametrization is based on a collection of ≈6000 experimentally measured partition coefficients, which we collected in the Solv@TUM database presented here. The accuracy of our optimized SCCS model is comparable to the well-known universal continuum solvation model (SMx) family of methods, while relying on only a single fit parameter and thereby largely reducing statistical noise. Furthermore, slightly modifying the non-electrostatic terms of the model, we present the SCCS-P solvation model as a more accurate alternative, in particular, for aromatic solutes. Finally, we show that SCCS parameters can, to a good degree of accuracy, also be predicted for solvents outside the database using merely the dielectric bulk permittivity of the solvent of choice.