Since a molecular-beam apparatus was first successfully used by Cho and
Arthur in the late 1960s to crystallize and investigate GaAs epilayers,
high vacuum epitaxial growth techniques using particle beams have
developed rapidly. This development accelerated when different
semiconductor devices with quantum well structures were invented in the
1970s. The important implementation of these structures in devices like
quantum-well lasers, high electron mobility tran sistors or superlattice
avalanche photodiodes gave added impetus to research work and to
increasing production aims. Coincident with this development, orig inal
research papers and reviews devoted to problems concerning these growth
techniques have also rapidly grown in number, and in addition they have
become very disversified. At present several hundred original papers on
this subject ap pear in the literature each year. However, in contrast
to this there is a lack of comprehensive monographs comprising the whole
variety of problems related to epitaxial growth of semiconductor films
from atomic and molecular beams. This book, which presents a review of
the state of the art of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), as applied to the
growth of semiconductor films and multilayer structures, may serve the
reader as a convenient general guide to the topics related to this
crystallization technique."