The first success with the growth of III/V semiconductor materials by OMVPE dates back to the mid-1950s. Today, it is the largest volume technique for the production of III/V photonic and electronic devices with commercial reactors yielding 2000 cm(2)/run. This paper will briefly trace the history and the development of key concepts in our understanding of this complex growth process, including brief discussions of the precursors and thermodynamics and kinetics of growth. Special attention will be paid to surface processes and the use of surfactants to control the properties of the resulting materials. Our understanding of this topic is still under rapid development. The discussion will extend to the control of surface processes for the growth of low dimensional structures such as superlattices, and quantum-wells, -wires, and -dots. The emphasis will be mainly semiconductor materials, including novel alloys, but the rapidly developing area of oxides for dielectrics and ferroelectrics for integrated circuits will be discussed briefly. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.