SURFACE-DIFFUSION OF AG ON FE(110)

We have previously established that the growth mode for Ag on Fe(110) is Stranski-Krastanov with Ag islands growing on top of two intermedia te Ag layers, In the present study, patches of Ag are deposited on Fe( 110) at room temperature and subsequently annealed. Quantitative infor mation is obtained by monitoring the expansion of these patches as a f unction of time using biased secondary electron imaging, The experimen ts indicate that the first Ag monolayer (ML) expands via surface diffu sion of adatoms produced by the dissociation of the islands and the se cond ML, A kinetic model is developed to explain the expansion (and co ntraction) of these layers and to extract related atomic energies. The effective activation energy for surface diffusion is similar in value to that obtained for Ag/W(110).