EAM study of surface self-diffusion of single adatoms of fcc metals Ni, Cu, Al, Ag, Au, Pd, and Pt

Abstract Self-diffusion of single adatoms on the (100), (110), (111), (311), and (331) surfaces of fcc metals is investigated with the embedded atom method (EAM). The general trend of activation energies for these surfaces is consistent with experimental observations. The calculated activation energies for Ni are in excellent agreement with experimental data, but those for Al and Pt differ from experimental values by up to a factor of 3. The estimated pre-exponential factors are in the range of 10 −4 −10 −2 cm 2 s , in good agreement with experiment.