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In this prospective study 244 consecutive patients presenting with typical and chronic signs of gastroesophageal reflux were included. Conventional 24-hr esophageal pH monitoring was carried out to establish the symptom association probability, the concordance index, and the symptom sensitivity index. The symptom association probability could be calculated in 110 patients (45%). Two groups were identified: group 1 had normal duration of esophageal acid exposure; subgroup 1a (nonsignificant symptom association probability) included 39 patients (35.5%) and subgroup 1b (significant symptom association probability) included 24 patients (21.8%); group 2 had abnormal duration of esophageal acid exposure; subgroup 2a (nonsignificant symptom association probability) included 21 patients (19.1%) and subgroup 2b (significant symptom association probability) included 26 patients (23.6%). In all, 56.6% of the patients presented typical symptoms of reflux not directly determined by one or repeated acid reflux episodes. The correlation between symptom association probability and the symptom sensitivity index allows for more accurate determination of esophageal acid sensitivity (subgroups 1b and 2b).

A variety of optical methods are now available for studying surface processes and for monitoring layer thicknesses and compositions during semiconductor crystal growth by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), organometallic chemical vapor deposition (OMCVD), and related techniques. New capabilities for surface analysis are being provided by developing techniques such as reflectance-difference spectroscopy (RDS), which use intrinsic symmetries to suppress ordinarily dominant bulk contributions. Bulk and microstructural properties such as compositions and layer thicknesses can be determined by techniques such as spectroellipsometry (SE), which return information integrated over the penetration depth of light. Recent advances include the application of reflectance to monitor dynamic surface processes, RDS to characterize (001) GaAs surfaces in OMCVD environments, and SE to control growth of AlxGa1-x, As materials and structures.

Device quality GaAs was grown in a conventional Organometallic Chemical Vapor Deposition (OMCVD) reactor, using sequential group III and V reactant gas exposures typical of Atomic Layer Epitaxy (ALE). The importance of gas phase concentration transients during the ALE cycles was revealed by systematic investigations of the effect of the sequences used, for the cycles, on impurity incorporation as well as on the growth rates. In this study, we attempt to quantify the effects of such transients by solving the diffusion equation for the reactant gases, with initial conditions specific to ALE. We used this model to calculate the time dependence of the reactant gas concentration at the growing surface. This quantitative study gives us new insights into the ALE technique and confirms that the V/II ratio at the substrate surface can be controlled by the choice of the gas sequence.

Reflectance-difference spectroscopy (RDS) is a recently developed optical technique that allows to monitor chemical and structural changes at a growing semiconductor surface, in-situ and in real-time. This technique was applied recently to organometallic chemical vapor deposition (OMCVD) on a [100] GaAs growth surface. The results show that submonolayer coverage of reacted species can be followed by this technique, which provided unique insights into the microscopic growth mechanisms. The time, temperature and pressure dependences of surface coverage show that OMCVD growth is controlled by two basic processes with distinct activation energies, i.e. reversible chemisorption (at -26 kcal/mole), and decomposition (at 39 kcal/mole) of trimethylgallium (TMG) at surface lattice sites. The importance of reversible chemisorption, which is of an excluded-volume type, due to the large size of the TMG molecule, had been overlooked until now in the literature, where only one activation energy was used to describe growth kinetics.

Te enhanced mixing of AlAs/GaAs superlattice has been observed by secondary ion mass spectrometry. The superlattice sample was grown by organometallic chemical vapor deposition and doped with Te at concentrations of 2×1017 to 5×1018 cm−.3 In the temperature range from 700 to 1000 C, a single activation energy for the Al diffusion of 2.9 eV was observed. Furthermore, it has been found that the relationship between the Al diffusion coefficient and Te concentration is linear. Comparisons have been made between Si and Te induced superlattice mixing.

Using a real-time surface probe with 0.01 monolayer (ML) sensitivity, we determine the rate-limiting steps for atmospheric-pressure, alternating-layer-epitaxy OMCVD growth on (001) and (110) GaAs with trimethylgallium and arsine sources. The reaction of TMG with AsH3- saturated (001) GaAs is limited by a competition between decomposition (at 39 kcal/mole) and desorption of TMG chemisorbed (at −26 kcal/mole) via an excluded-volume mechanism. The reaction of AsH3with TMG-saturated (001) GaAs shows an initial fast transient followed by a slower recovery. On (110) GaAs, TMG reacts essentially instantaneously with an AsH3-saturated surface while the reaction of AsH3 with a TMG-saturated surface is relatively slow. In the latter case temperature and pressure dependences indicate a fast AsH3 -surface reaction that is blocked by an adsorbed species that must be desorbed before the AsH3 -surface reaction can take place.