Abstract
Adsorption and mobility of Au adatoms on Au (110)-(1×2) were studied by low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Up to 0.4-monolayer coverage the troughs of the missing row reconstruction are preferentially filled. By following the mobility of individual adatoms at 125 K and 170 K the adatom hopping barrier inside the troughs in the [Formula: see text] direction is determined to Ed=0.40–0.44 eV, while for diffusion on locally unreconstructed parts of the surface we obtain a lower limit of 0.38 eV. By comparing the cluster size distribution obtained for themally immobile adatoms at 125 K with that from simulations, it is demonstrated that transient mobility plays no significant role in Au / Au (110) self-adsorption. During Au deposition at 190 K domain boundaries ("faulted troughs") are observed to form in the 1× 2 substrate; a tentative mechanism involving exchange diffusion of Au adatoms is proposed.
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