Modeling of Surface Diffusion for Stepped Surfaces: Transfer Matrix Approach

1. Introduction Surface diffusion is of considerable intrinsic interest and also important for understanding the mechanism of surface reactions [1,2]. It is well known that diffusion of chemisorbed particles occurs, as a rule, via jumps between nearest-neighbor sites and can be rather accurately described in the frameworks of the transitient state theory and lattice-gas model. For simplicity we assume that the tops of diffusion potential barriers are the same for all lattice sites. In this case, the chemical diffusion coefficient can be expressed as