Calculations of Surface Binding and Mobility of Adatoms.

Theoretical calculations are developed to explore the behavior of adatoms on the surfaces of a simple metal. The first application was to an adatom pseudo potential plus valence electron on a jellium model of a free electron type metal. The density functional approximation was used to evaluate the binding energy as a function of adatom-surface distance. Next a layer of surface ions was introduced and the adatom surface binding energy determined as a function of position over the surface, thereby evaluating the energy for surface migration. Finally the influence of one layer steps, or ledges, on an otherwise smooth surface, were explored and the size of the binding energy for adatoms at a ledge was evaluated. Author