Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations were used to investigate the dynamics of island growth during sub-monolayer epitaxy in the presence of anisotropic surface diffusion, and the influence of a recently hypothesized crowdion diffusion mechanism. An existing rate equation mean-field analysis of island growth was extended to include anisotropic diffusion. The mean-field analysis was found to be at odds with results from kinetic Monte Carlo simulations indicating that the details of the surface diffusion mechanism influence the nucleation rate. It was found that anisotropy in adatom hopping reduces the density of stable islands. It was also found that although the shape of the island size distribution was sensitive to island relaxation processes, it was not discernibly affected by hopping anisotropy with ratios Dxx/Dyy up to 16.

Irreversible Island Growth in the Presence of Anisotropic Surface Diffusion with Long Jumps. P.A.Greaney, D.C.Chrzan: Physical Review B, 2005, 72[11], 115432 (14pp)