NUCLEATION AND GROWTH IN METAL-ON-METAL HOMOEPITAXY - RATE-EQUATIONS,SIMULATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS

We illustrate the utility of the ''mean-field'' rate equation treatmen t of nucleation and growth with critical size i greater-than-or-equal- to 1 for both isotropic and strongly anisotropic diffusion. Some compa rison is made of rate equation predictions for mean densities and size distributions of stable islands with predictions from ''exact'' simul ations for the low coverage precoalescence regime. We also consider is land separation distributions, depletion effects, and associated split ting of kinematic diffraction profiles. We necessarily treat other iss ues via simulations. These include analysis of (i) transitions in isla nd shape from compact to dendritic, as observed for Pt/Pt(111), and ex traction of associated edge diffusion barriers; and (ii) adlayer perco lation, which sometimes mediates the population of higher layers. We a lso briefly comment on nucleation and growth behavior in the specific systems M/M(100) with M=Fe, Pd, Au, Cu, Ni, and Ag.