Bonding and barriers in metallic islands: A study at semi-empirical level

In this work the binding energy of metallic islands (Fe, Cu, Ag) deposited in heteroepitaxis on a metallic substrate is calculated with a semi-empirical method within the extended Debye-Hueckel approximation. We have also calculated the Erlich-Schwoebel barriers for adatoms descending steps and we illustrate the dependence of these energies on the isle size and composition. These data, in conjunction with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, should be of use for the prediction of the island morphology and evolution during experiments.