Monte Carlo simulations were used to study the size and temperature dependences of the diffusion coefficient of adatom islands on the (100) surface. It was shown that the scaling exponent for the size-dependence was not a constant, but was a decreasing function of the island size and approached unity in the case of very large islands. This was due to a crossover, from periphery-dominated mass transport, to a regime where vacancies diffused within the islands. The effective scaling exponents were in good agreement with both theory and experiment.

Island Diffusion on Metal FCC (100) Surfaces. J.Heinonen, I.Koponen, J.Merikoski, T.Ala-Nissila: Physical Review Letters, 1999, 82[13], 2733-6