Effects of pressure, temperature and atomic exchanges on phase separation dynamics in Au/Ni(111) surface alloy: Kinetic Monte Carlo study

Abstract Instability of the Au/Ni(111) surface alloy is studied in different CO gas pressure, p , and temperature limits using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. We analyze the reaction front dynamics and formation of Au clusters using the model which takes into account surface adatom pair and three-body interactions, CO adsorption and desorption, catalytic carbonyl formation reaction, Au and Ni adatom diffusion and their concerted exchange. Variation of interaction parameters allows us to identify three possible reaction front propagation limits with different pressure dependencies: (i) slow channel-like flow in agreement with experimental data [1] (step flow rate, R , increases with p ), (i…