Abstract
Motivated by recent research of Nikitin et al (J.Phys.D 49,055301(2009)), we examine the effects of interatomic interactions on adatom surface diffusion. By using a mean-field approach in the random walk problem, we derive a nonlinear diffusion equation and analyze its solutions. The results of our analysis are in good agreement with direct numerical simulations of the corresponding discrete model. It is shown that by analyzing a time dependence of adatom concentration profiles one can estimate the type and strength of interatomic interactions.
Highlights
Surface diffusion is important in nano-technological processes which are aimed to obtain objects of submicron sizes where the surface properties are of the same importance as the bulk ones
We have investigated the role of interactions between adatoms in surface diffusion
0.05 i corresponding nonlinear diffusion equations with an initial condition in a form of step-like concentration profile, we have found that the interactions between adatoms influence significantly the concentration profile development on early and intermediate stage of the process
Summary
Bowker and King [10] used Monte-Carlo simulations in order to clarify the effect of lateral interactions of adatoms on the shape of evolving concentration profiles in surface diffusion. They showed that the intersection point of the diffusion profiles with the initial stepwise profile lies above θmax/2 in the case of lateral repulsion and below θmax/2 in the case of attraction (θmax is the maximum concentration in the initial step). The goal of our paper is to model and examine the effects of interatomic interactions on adatom surface diffusion.
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