Determination of step-edge barriers to interlayer transport from surface morphology during the initial stages of homoepitaxial growth.

We use analytic formulas obtained from a simple model of crystal growth by molecular-beam epitaxy to determine step-edge barriers to interlayer transport. The method is based on information about the surface morphology at the onset of nucleation on top of first-layer islands in the submonolayer coverage regime of homoepitaxial growth. The formulas are tested using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of a solid-on-solid model and applied to estimate step-edge barriers from scanning-tunneling microscopy data on initial stages of Fe(001), Pt(111), and Ag(111) homoepitaxy.