Structure and Dynamics of Surface Adsorbed Clusters

TL;DR

This paper reports extensive simulations of large surface-adsorbed clusters, analyzing their structure and dynamics, particularly how perimeter hopping processes influence cluster diffusion on metal surfaces.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical analysis of cluster diffusion, explicitly relating perimeter hopping rates to the diffusion coefficient, advancing understanding of surface cluster dynamics.

Findings

Cluster center-of-mass follows a random walk due to perimeter hopping.

Diffusion coefficient depends on perimeter hopping rates.

Explicit relations between hopping process rates and diffusion are established.

Abstract

Extensive numerical simulation are reported for the structure and dynamics of large clusters on metal(100) surfaces. Different types of perimeter hopping processes makes center-of-mass of the cluster to follow a a random walk trajectory. Then, a {\it diffusion coefficient} $D$ can be defined as $\lim\limits_{t\to \infty} D(t)$, with $D(t)=< d^2 >/(4t)$ and $d$ the displacement of the center-of-mass. In the simulations, the dependence of the diffusion coefficient on those perimeter hopping processes can be analyzed in detail, since the relations between different rates for the processes are explicitly considered as parameters.