Surface Diffusion - Anisotropy

Anisotropy

Orientational anisotropy takes the form of a difference in both diffusion rates and mechanisms at the various surface orientations of a given material. For a given crystalline material each Miller Index plane may display unique diffusion phenomena. Close packed surfaces such as the fcc (111) tend to have higher diffusion rates than the correspondingly more "open" faces of the same material such as fcc (100).

Directional anisotropy refers to a difference in diffusion mechanism or rate in a particular direction on a given crystallographic plane. These differences may be a result of either anisotropy in the surface lattice (e.g. a rectangular lattice) or the presence of steps on a surface. One of the more dramatic examples of directional anisotropy is the diffusion of adatoms on channeled surfaces such as fcc (110), where diffusion along the channel is much faster than diffusion across the channel.