Within the past few years the progress in chemical beam epitaxy (CBE) has been tremendous. At present, almost every major electronics laboratory has a research and development effort in CBE or related growth process. The results obtained so far clearly demonstrate that high quality InGaAsP/InP materials and heterostructures suitable for state-of-the-art device applications can be routinely prepared by CBE. With new metalorganic aluminum compounds becoming available, high quality GaAs/AlGaAs with low residual carbon background also has successfully been prepared recently. GaAs/AlGaAs modulation doped field-effect transistors prepared by CBE have similar device performance as those prepared by molecular beam epitaxy. This paper reviews the qualities of epilayers and quantum wells, surface chemical kinetics, doping studies, alternate sources, laser-assisted CBE, atomic layer epitaxy, and opto-electronic device applications. © 1990.