Dynamics of atoms on silicon substrates

The molecular dynamics method is used to simulate the diffusion of adatoms on Si(111) and Si(001) surfaces. We propose a scheme whereby the interatomic interactions in multi-component systems can be obtained from a knowledge of the interactions in each component. We find that Ni atoms are more mobile than Si adatoms and that of the (001)(2 × 1) reconstructed surface, Si adatoms prefer to move across the dimers with a very low diffusion barrier