Molecular dynamics simulation was used to produce a map of the adatom migration barriers on several face-centered cubic(110) metal surfaces. The metals were modelled by many-body potentials within the second moment approximation to the tight-binding model. The estimated barriers were found to be influenced by the proximity of steps and by terrace size. For each metal, the onset temperatures of some important diffusion processes were estimated through a 1-d exactly solvable growth model constructed to describe the growth along the [001] and the [1¯10] directions separately. The exact surface profile in the two directions on small samples at low temperatures were given for some metals. The latter suggested the existence of cross-channel ripples at the onset of in-channel jump diffusion in the steady growth state on each face-centered cubic (110) surface due to the strong anisotropy in the intralayer diffusion barriers. These findings were confirmed by kinetic Monte Carlo simulation at relatively low temperatures.

Diffusion and Growth on FCC(110) Metal Surfaces: a Computational Study. Ndongmouo, U.T., Hontinfinde, F.: Surface Science, 2004, 571[1-3], 89-101