Interpretation of reflection high energy electron diffraction from disordered surfaces: Dynamical theory and its application to the experiment

Reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) is one of the few surfa ce science techniques that are applied in a fabrication process, namely to monitor the epitaxial growth of ultrathin films and advanced materials. In spite of this technological relevance the multiple scattering nature of the involved scattering processes has hindered the quantitative interpretation of RHEED in the case of real, i.e. imperfect, surfaces for a long time. Th is article reviews recent progress in the understanding of RHEED from surfa ces exhibiting various types of disorder. It concentrates on a multiple sca ttering formalism - based on perturbation theory with the nonperiodic part of the structure as perturbation - that allows the computation and interpre tation of RHEED from real systems. The validity regime of the approach is d iscussed. We demonstrate the potential of the method by its application to the quantitative interpretation of experimental data. The range of treated problems comprises occupational disorder, intensity oscillations, structure of disordered metal/adsorbate systems, diffuse scattering from adatoms, Ki kuchi scattering and phonon scattering.