Growth and coalescence in submonolayer homoepitaxy on Cu(100) studied with high-resolution low-energy electron diffraction

Initial stages of Cu epitaxy on Ni(100): Postnucleation and a well-defined transition in critical island size

“…From the dependence of island separation versus flux, the authors conclude, however, that such a transition occurs. 39 Since the value of E b is based on this assumption, it should be interpreted with care, as has also been noticed by the authors themselves. 3 In addition, the data are better explained by a transition from hopping to exchange with increasing temperature instead of a transition in critical island size.…”

Microscopic view of epitaxial metal growth: nucleation and aggregation

“…It was acquired at irreversible growth conditions thus involving a pair binding model with the energy for a lateral bond as additional parameter. A SPA-LEED study by Luo et al [185] evaluated island densities for AgaAg (1 1 1) from the temperature dependence of the spot pro®le, analogous to Zou et al for Cu(1 0 0) [95,165]. Irreversible island formation was assumed up to 200 K. However, for that system Ostwald ripening of dimers sets in at 130 K [150].…”

“…Accordingly the island densities below that temperature showed Arrhenius behavior from which the activation energy of Fe diffusion on Fe(1 0 0) could be inferred. The authors were lucky in their choice of system as FeaFe (1 0 0) [95,165].…”

Models for adatom diffusion on fcc (001) metal surfaces

“…Experiments on thin film growth on well characterized substrates using molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) have provided a large body of information about growth kinetics and morphology, and revealed that for a variety of systems and a broad temperature range, island nucleation is the dominant mechanism for crystal growth [1,2]. Diffraction methods such as helium beam scattering [1,[3][4][5][6], low energy electron diffraction [7][8][9][10] and other techniques [11,12], provide information on the collective behavior and the statistical properties of the surface. These techniques have been used to measure the island size distribution, the island density, and their scaling properties with respect to the coverage and the flux [3,[7][8][9][10].…”

“…Diffraction methods such as helium beam scattering [1,[3][4][5][6], low energy electron diffraction [7][8][9][10] and other techniques [11,12], provide information on the collective behavior and the statistical properties of the surface. These techniques have been used to measure the island size distribution, the island density, and their scaling properties with respect to the coverage and the flux [3,[7][8][9][10]. The variation of the island density with respect to the temperature was also studied [3,9,11].…”