RHEED is an extremely popular technique for monitoring the growth of thin films. In particular, RHEED is well suited for use with molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), a process used to form high quality, ultrapure thin films under ultrahigh vacuum growth conditions. The intensities of individual spots on the RHEED pattern fluctuate in a periodic manner as a result of the relative surface coverage of the growing thin film. Figure 8 shows an example of the intensity fluctuating at a single RHEED point during MBE growth.
Each full period corresponds to formation of a single atomic layer thin film. The oscillation period is highly dependent on the material system, electron energy and incident angle, so researchers obtain empirical data to correlate the intensity oscillations and film coverage before using RHEED for monitoring film growth.
Video 1 depicts a metrology instrument recording the RHEED intensity oscillations and deposition rate for process control and analysis.