RHEED: Principle of operation:

• A brief illustration of the operation principle for a cubic lattice sample is described below in Figure 8.01: The electrons with a momentum k₀ incident on the sample surface at a small incident angle. As a result, they are scattered from the top layer of atoms of the sample.

Figure 8.01: Schematic of e-beam incident on a reciprocal lattice.

• In the figure, the surface is shown in reciprocal space. This reciprocal lattice builds a surface with a quadratic array of atoms. Assuming elastic scattering, the scattered wave vector k_ij lies on the surface of the sphere of constant energy, the so-called Ewald sphere.