Abstract
We measure the activation energy for surface diffusion of isolated Pb adatoms on Ge(111) by observing individual atomic interchanges using a scanning tunneling microscope. The diffusion occurs mainly along one direction of the c(2×8) reconstructed surface with Pb adatoms moving between substitutional Ge adatom sites. Only half of the adatom interchanges are to near-neighbor sites, the rest are long jumps. The scanning process does not affect the diffusion. For temperatures from 24 to 79°C we find the diffusion obeys an Arrhenius law with an activation energy of 0.540.03 eV.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1567-1570 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Physical review letters |
Volume | 68 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1992 |