We report on the use of reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) study that indicates that the GaAs (711)A is right at the transition between vicinal GaAs (100) and vicinal GaAs (511)A surfaces and that a variation of the As overpressure switches the surface morphology between the two vicinal surfaces. The steps on the vicinal (100) surface have a width of 1.5 nm creating a staircase surface with excellent possibilities for. growth of quantum wells. As-rich conditions can be described by vicinal (511)A surfaces with a width of 3.5 nm. This surface could find applications as a template for quantum wire growth. The observation suggests that the transition between these two morphologies is understandable based on the increase in surface energy of a vicinal (100) surface as the step separation approaches the dimer reconstructed separation. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.