Competing effects of interactions in the adsorbed and activated states on surface diffusion at low temperatures

TL;DR

This study examines how two types of interactions, between adsorbed particles and between activated and adsorbed particles, influence surface diffusion at low temperatures across different lattice structures, revealing complex effects including acceleration and deceleration.

Contribution

It introduces a lattice-gas model analyzing competing interactions and their impact on surface diffusion, highlighting conditions under which diffusion is significantly accelerated or unaffected.

Findings

Attractive eta accelerates diffusion exponentially when dominant

Repulsive or slightly attractive eta has minimal impact

Diffusion can be exponentially boosted or slowed depending on eta and epsilon ratio

Abstract

The competing influence of two types of interactions on surface diffusion is investigated: one of them, epsilon, acts between adsorbed particles, while the other one, eta, between activated and adsorbed particles. To this end, a specific lattice-gas model on a triangular, square, and hexagonal lattice is considered with an attractive epsilon and an attractive or repulsive eta, both restricted to nearest neighbors. For all three lattices the influence is qualitatively the same. Namely, when eta is neglected, then epsilon is shown to decelerate diffusion with a rate exponential in epsilon and inverse temperature. Moreover, when eta is present and epsilon is fixed, then a sufficiently attractive eta (relative to epsilon) accelerates diffusion exponentially fast in eta and inverse temperature. However, quite surprisingly, a repulsive or slightly attractive eta has practically no effect on diffusion. Finally, when eta is set proportional to epsilon via a parameter $a$, surface diffusion is exponentially accelerated (decelerated) for $a$ above (below) a threshold value equal to 4, 5/4, and 7/8 for the three lattices. Thus, an eta of strength comparable to epsilon is enough to boost diffusion on the square and hexagonal lattices, while an eta of a rather large strength is needed for the boost on the triangular lattice.