Dynamics of Cu monomer, dimer and trimer on Ag (110) (1 x 2) missing-row reconstructed surface

The authors aimed to investigate the diffusion of Cu monomer, dimer and trimer on Ag (110) (1x2) missing-row surface. This problem is addressed through molecular dynamic simulation based on semi-empirical many-body potential, derived from the embedded atom method. Within this approach, we have identified and calculated the activation energy of each microscopic mechanism. Thus, for Cu monomer, the diffusion process occurs essentially by simple hopping between nearest-neighbor sites. While for the Cu dimer, three processes have been identified such as dissociation-reassociation (DR), concerted jump (CJ) and leapfrog mechanisms (LF) with a slight predominance of DR process and a dual competition between CJ and LF processes. But, in the case of small one-dimensional cluster such as trimer on (110)(1x2) missing-row reconstructed surface, the main diffusion mechanism is the LF process. These results shed light on the diffusion processes on missing-row reconstructed surfaces, especially for heterogeneous systems. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.