Abstract
Reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) is widely used to characterize the surface structure of single crystals. Moreover, RHEED has become a standard tool to monitor thin film growth in molecular beam epitaxy and is used to monitor other vapor deposition techniques including evaporation, sputtering, and pulsed laser deposition. With the rapid development of the fabrication methods and use of nanoparticles, RHEED operating in the transmission mode is being applied to characterize nanoparticles on surfaces. In this review, the fundamentals needed to interpret RHEED patterns from the top few atomic layers, in its reflection mode, and from nanoparticles and nanofeatures, in its transmission mode, are discussed based on the geometric kinematic approximation. Examples are provided on the interpretation of RHEED patterns from unreconstructed and 2 × 1-reconstructed Si(100), InP(100), highly oriented pyrolytic graphite, indium nanoparticles, and indium growth on Si(100)− 2 × 1.