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The NATO Advanced Study Institute on "Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) and Heterostructures" was held at the Ettore Majorana Center for Scientific Culture, Erice, Italy, on March 7-19, 1983, the second course of the International School of Solid-State Device Re search. This volume contains the lectures presented at the Institute. Throughout the history of semiconductor development, the coupling between processing techniques and device structures for both scientific investigations and technological applications has time and again been demonstrated. Newly conceived ideas usually demand the ultimate in existing techniques, which often leads to process innova tions. The emergence of a process, on the other hand, invariably creates opportunities for device improvement and invention. This intimate relationship between the two has most recently been witnessed in MBE and heterostructures, the subject of this Institute. This volume is divided into several sections. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction by providing a perspective of the subject. This is followed by two sections, each containing four chapters, Chapters 2-5 addressing the principles of the MBE process and Chapters 6-9 describ ing its use in the growth of a variety of semiconductors and heteros tructures. The next two sections, Chapters to-II and Chapters 12-15, treat the theory and the electronic properties of the heterostructures, respectively. The focus is on energy quantization of the two dimensional electron system. Chapters 16-17 are devoted to device structures, including both field-effect transistors and lasers and detec tors.

This subject is divided into two volumes. Volume I is on homoepitaxy with the necessary systems, techniques, and models for growth and dopant incorporation. Three chapters on homoepitaxy are followed by two chapters describing the different ways in which MBE may be applied to create insulator/Si stackings which may be used for three-dimensional circuits. The two remaining chapters in Volume I are devoted to device applications. The first three chapters of Volume II treat all aspects of heteroepitaxy with the exception of the epitaxial insulator/Si structures already treated in volume I.

The book is a history of Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) as applied to the growth of semiconductor thin films (note that it does not cover the subject of metal thin films). It begins by examining the origins of MBE, first of all looking at the nature of molecular beams and considering their application to fundamental physics, to the development of nuclear magnetic resonance and to the invention of the microwave MASER. It shows how molecular beams of silane (SiH4) were used to study the nucleation of silicon films on a silicon substrate and how such studies were extended to compound semiconductors such as GaAs. From such surface studies in ultra-high vacuum the technique developed into a method of growing high quality single crystal films of a wide range of semiconductors. Comparing this with earlier evaporation methods of deposition and with other epitaxial deposition methods such as liquid phase and vapour phase epitaxy (LPE and VPE). The text describes the development of MBE machines from the early 'home-made' variety to that of commercial equipment and show how MBE was gradually refined to produce high quality films with atomic dimensions. This was much aided by the use of various in-situ surface analysis techniques, such as reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) and mass spectrometry, a feature unique to MBE. It looks at various modified versions of the basic MBE process, then proceed to describe their application to the growth of so-called 'low-dimensional structures' (LDS) based on ultra-thin heterostructure films with thickness of order a few molecular monolayers. Further chapters cover the growth of a wide range of different compounds and describe their application to fundamental physics and to the fabrication of electronic and opto-electronic devices. The authors study the historical development of all these aspects and emphasise both the (often unexpected) manner of their discovery and development and the unique features which MBE brings to the growth of extremely complex structures with monolayer accuracy.