Use of photoemission with synchrotron radiation to probe surfaces on an atomic scale

The capabilities of synchrotron radiation are briefly reviewed with an emphasis on applications to photoemission spectroscopy. The physics of photoemission is also briefly reviewed with emphasis on the importance of the escape length of the photo-executed electron in determining the depth of material examined. Most of the text is utilized to demonstrate these techniques in the GaAs (110) - oxygen system and CuNi alloy - surface segregation studies. The relative importance of thermodynamic equilibrium and activation energies are discussed