We present a different mechanism to explain the occurrence of long-lived oscillations in diffraction spot intensities during epitaxial growth of metal films on fcc (100) substrates at low temperature. Rather than rely on the common picture of cyclical nucleation and growth to produce the oscillations, the model invokes ''downward funneling'' deposition dynamics to fourfold-hollow adsorption sites.

We present the conceptual and formal simplifications of the recently developed corrected effective medium (CEM) theory that enable this theory to be used directly in molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of large systems, hence the acronym MD/MC-CEM. The essential idea involves adjustment of the CEM embedding functions to include approximately the original explicit correction for kinetic-exchange-correlation energy differences between the real system and the many atom–jellium systems used as the zeroth order model. Examples of this construction are provided for the Ni, Pd, Ar, and H/Pd(111) systems. Finally, a few brief applications of this method to large systems are provided. These include relaxation of metal surfaces, structure of pure Ni and mixed NiCu clusters, sticking of Cu on Cu(100), and the scattering of Ar from H covered Pd(111).

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