12 Surface diffusion on non-metallic solids

This chapter concerns surface diffusion on insulating substrates. Effects of surface damage and charging have eliminated several common experimental techniques used for metals such as field emission and field ion microscopies from the available repertoire. Instead, there has arisen a large collection of over 15 methods, most of which can be applied only to a very restricted set of adsorption systems that fortuitously have properties favorable to the detection of surface mobility. The salient features of these methods are outlined briefly in one of the sections of this chapter. In some cases, the methods have been utilized in ways not detailed here. The tables of diffusion parameters are divided as intrinsic diffusion and mass transfer diffusion on insulating substrates.