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Phys. Rev. B 64, 161405 (2001) [4 pages]

Role of concerted atomic movements on the diffusion of small islands on fcc(100) metal surfaces

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P. Salo1, J. Hirvonen1,2, I. T. Koponen2, O. S. Trushin1,3, J. Heinonen1, and T. Ala-Nissila1,4
1Helsinki Institute of Physics and Laboratory of Physics, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 1100, FIN-02015 HUT, Espoo, Finland
2Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 64, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
3The Institute of Microelectronics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya 21, Yaroslavl 150007, Russia
4Department of Physics, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912-1843

Rapid Communication Received 6 July 2001; revised 21 August 2001; published 5 October 2001

The master equation formalism is used to analytically calculate the center-of-mass diffusion coefficient for small two-dimensional islands on fcc(100) metal surfaces. We consider the case of Cu on Cu(100) containing up to nine atoms, with energetics obtained from semiempirical interaction potentials. In the case where only single-particle processes are taken into account, the analytic results agree well with previous Monte Carlo simulation data. However, when recently proposed many-particle processes are included, in some cases the diffusion coefficients increase by an order of magnitude at room temperatures. Qualitatively, the oscillatory behavior of diffusion as a function of the island size is not affected by the many-particle processes.


©2001 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRB/v64/e161405
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.64.161405
PACS: 68.35.Fx, 36.40.Sx, 68.55.-a

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