Models were proposed which described self-diffusion on face-centered cubic metal substrates. The models were tested for (001) surfaces, and were found to work well for all of the present metals. For each of them, the models could be used to estimate the activation energy of any diffusion process by using a few basic parameters that could be obtained from experiments, ab initio predictions or semi-empirical calculations. The parameters of the models were optimized, so as to describe self-diffusion on the (001) surface, by comparing the energy barriers with a full set of barriers which was obtained from semi-empirical potentials by using the embedded atom method. It was found that models with at most 4 parameters provided a good description of the full landscape of hopping energy-barriers on face-centered cubic (001) surfaces. The main features of the diffusion processes which were revealed by embedded-atom model calculations were quantitatively reproduced by the models.

Models for Adatom Diffusion on FCC (001) Metal Surfaces. H.Mehl, O.Biham, I.Furman, M.Karimi: Physical Review B, 1999, 60[3], 2106-17