A study of maximum unit-circle caterpillars — tools for the study of the shape of adsorption patterns Original Research Article

Adsorption patterns of molecules on some planar solid surfaces often follow the pattern of hexagonal close packing of the underlying lattice. A family of adsorption patterns can be represented by clusters of unit circles having tangential contacts or partial overlaps with one another, following precisely or approximately the underlying lattice of the solid. The shapes of these patterns can be characterized in terms of elementary shape contributions. One important class of these patterns corresponds to a family of graphs, the unit-circle caterpillars. In this study, we shall present some new results on their limiting cases, the maximum unit-circle caterpillars.