U. Korte, Interpretation of reflection high energy electron diffraction from disordered surfaces: Dynamical theory and its application to the experiment, SURF REV L, 6(3-4), 1999, pp. 461-495
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.