A novel mechanism was described for the diffusion of homo-epitaxial 2-dimensional islands, on such surfaces, via the nucleation and motion of misfit dislocations. Embedded-atom molecular dynamics calculations showed that this mechanism would compare favorably, with edge running and simultaneous gliding, for islands which were up to some tens of atoms in size. It was suggested that this mechanism could facilitate the diffusion of hetero-epitaxial strained over-layer islands which contained dislocations in their lowest energy configurations.

J.C.Hamilton, M.S.Daw, S.M.Foiles: Physical Review Letters, 1995, 74[14], 2760-3