Island formation without attractive interactions

A. P. J. Jansen

Published 2008-02-18Version 1

We show that adsorbates on surfaces can form islands even if there are no attractive interactions. Instead strong repulsion between adsorbates at short distances can lead to islands, because such islands increase the entropy of the adsorbates that are not part of the islands. We suggest that this mechanism cause the observed island formation in O/Pt(111), but it may be important for many other systems as well.