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G. Franceschi, M. Schmid, U. Diebold, M. Riva:
"Reconstruction changes drive surface diffusion and determine the flatness of oxide surfaces";
Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A, 40 (2022), 0232061 - 0232068.

Surface diffusion on metal oxides is key in many areas of materials technology, yet it has been scarcely explored at the atomic scale. This
work provides phenomenological insights from scanning tunneling microscopy on the link between surface diffusion, surface atomic struc-
ture, and oxygen chemical potential based on three model oxide surfaces: Fe 2 O3(1 102), La1−xSrxMnO 3(110), and In 2O3 (111). In all
instances, changing the oxygen chemical potential used for annealing stabilizes reconstructions of different compositions while promoting
the flattening of the surface morphology-a sign of enhanced surface diffusion. It is argued that thermodynamics, rather than kinetics, rules
surface diffusion under these conditions: the composition change of the surface reconstructions formed at differently oxidizing conditions
drives mass transport across the surface.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/6.0001704

https://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/publik_303807.pdf