A kinetic analysis of Fe islands growth on Mo(110) in the sub-monolayer range as a function of temperature was presented for the pulsed laser deposition epitaxial technique. This permitted the determination of a corresponding diffusion barrier of 0.1eV, and a diffusion attempt frequency of 8 x 1011Hz. Numerical integration of the standard kinetic differential equations was used to describe the specificity of the pulsed character of pulsed laser deposition. Good agreement was found with experimental results. A comparison to reported molecular beam epitaxy sub-monolayer growth of Fe at 300K was also considered. The pulsed laser deposition technique was demonstrated to lead to an increase of the diffusion rate by 4 orders of magnitude, presumably as a consequence of the higher energy of the impinging species. Incidentally, this increase of diffusion rate was compensated by the large instantaneous deposition flux leading to identical densities using molecular beam epitaxy or pulsed laser deposition for Fe/Mo(110) at 300K.

Nucleation and Surface Diffusion in Pulsed Laser Deposition of Fe on Mo(110). P.O.Jubert, O.Fruchart, C.Meyer: Surface Science, 2003, 522[1-3], 8-16