Comment on "Interlayer mass transport and quantum confinement of electronic states"

A numerical analysis of the ripening of multilayer islands on Cu(111) shows that the EhrlichSchwoebel barrier for interlayer mass transport is independent of the terrace width w as long as w . wc ­ 14 6 2 Å, but vanishes for w , wc. The critical width wc corresponds exactly to the terrace width below which the surface state is pushed above the Fermi level due to quantum confinement. The Ehrlich-Schwoebel barrier is therefore correlated with the occupation of surface states. [S0031-9007(99)08912-7]