This book was written following my review article ‘Electron reflection, diffraction and imaging of bulk crystal surfaces in TEM and STEM’, published by Reports on Progress in Physics [56 (1993) 997]. Thanks are due to Dr Simon Capelin, the Editorial Manager of Cambridge University Press, for inviting me to write this book. The book is intended for surface scientists and microscopists who are interested in surface characterizations using reflected electron diffraction and imaging techniques.

Many of the ideas illustrated in the book were collected from my past working experiences with Professor J. M. Cowley, Dr J. Bentley, Professor R. F. Egerton, Dr Ping Lu and Dr J. Liu, to whom I am very grateful. Thanks also go to Professor J. C. H. Spence for his initial suggestions when this book was proposed. I heartily thank Dr Nea Wheeler for her careful and critical reviewing of the manuscript, which significantly improved its quality.

I am grateful to Drs C. C. Ahn, H. Banzhof, E. Bauer, P. A. Crozier, R. Garcia-Molina, J. M. Gibson, H. Homma, T. Hsu, A. Ichimiya, S. Ino, M. Iwatsuki, A. V. Latyshev, G. Lehmpfuhl, J. Liu, L. V. Litvin, H. Marten, G. Meyer-Ehmsen, H. Nakahara, H. Nakayama, N. Osakabe, J. C. H. Spence, Y. Tanishiro, K. Yagi, Y. Yamamoto and N. Yao, for permission to use their micrographs to illustrate the text. Thanks also go to Drs T. Hsu and L. M. Peng, who kindly provided the original REM bibliography text file.