Using electroreflectance in surface physics studies gives some major advantages over techniques used before its discovery. Before, the determination of the surface potential was the hard to do since you need electrical measurements at the surface and it was difficult to probe the surface region without involving the bulk underneath. Electroreflectance does not need to make electrical measurements on the surface, but only uses optical measurements. Furthermore, due to direct functional relationships between surface potential and reflectivity we can get rid of a lot assumptions about mobility, scattering, or trapping of added carriers needed in the older methods. The electric field of the surface is probed by the modulation of the beam reflected by the surface. The incoming beam does not penetrate the material deep, so you only probe the surface without interacting with the bulk underneath.