Abstract

The adsorption of Xe on the (1 1 0) face of an Al substrate is investigated by means of molecular dynamics. A thermodynamic transformation at constant temperature is studied as a function of the Lennard-Jones potential range parameter sigma(Xe-Al), for several sizes of the Xe island adsorbed on Al. This way a critical value of sigma(Xe-Al), for which the island undergoes a commensurate-incommensurate transition, is identified. The implications of our results are discussed in the context of experimental interpretation and compared with published Monte Carlo work on this system. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.