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

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), (ii) intermediate regime (weak p-dependence), and (iii) fast homogeneous flow (R decreases with p). We find that only Au-Ni exchange, contrary to both Ni-CO and Au-CO exchanges, significantly reduces the number of screened Ni atoms inside the Au clusters and stimulates the occurrence of Ni-free Au clusters. The size of Au islands depends on both pressure and temperature. At a fixed temperature it decreases with pressure due to an increased step flow rate. In the high temperature limit, despite the step flow rate exponential increase with temperature, the cluster size increases due to an enhanced Au mobility.