Applications of RHEED to the study of growth dynamics and surface chemistry during MBE

We discuss three applications of RHEED to the study of semiconductor film growth by MBE. In the first we discuss the extension of the vicinal plane method to the in-situ measurement of step propagation rates and show how they vary with growth parameters. The second concerns some apparent anomalies in the RHEED response to the growth of GaAs on GaAs(110) surfaces. Finally we consider surface chemical processes (reaction and segregation) in the growth of Si and SiGe alloys from molecular beams of Si 2 H 6 and GeH 4 . We demonstrate that the in-situ measurement of the growth rate on a monolayer-by-mono-layer basis can provide quite detailed chemical information.