Surface diffusion of k-mers in one-dimensional systems

Abstract

The surface diffusion of interacting k-mers is studied both through analytical and Monte Carlo simulation methods in one-dimensional systems. Adsorption isotherms, jump diffusion coefficients and collective diffusion coefficients are obtained for attractive and repulsive k-mers, showing a variety of behaviors as a function of the size of particles, k. The following main results are found: (a) diffusion coefficients increase with k for non-interacting particles; (b) for fixed k, diffusion coefficients increase as the interaction energy increases from negative (attractive) to positive (repulsive) values; (c) for attractive interactions diffusion coefficients increase with k in the whole range of coverage; (d) for repulsive interactions diffusion coefficients decrease with k up to moderately high coverage and increase with k at high coverage. Results are rationalized in terms of the behavior of the vacancy probability distribution.