Towards clean and atomically flat ZnO (000&1macr;) surfaces
Abstract
We established a cleaning procedure to obtain atomically flat 
surfaces from pressurized melt grown ZnO using ex-situ and in-situ processing. The ex-situ chemical cleaning consisted in removing the surface fluid layer and contaminants from the surface. The physical in-situ procedure used sputtering-annealing cycles to clean and reconstruct the surface. 3 key parameters were in-situ investigated: the annealing time, the annealing temperature and the sputtering energy. Investigations were carried out by means of Low Energy Electron Diffraction (LEED), Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES), X-ray Photoemission Spectroscopy (XPS), Time of Flight of Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToF-SIMS), Atomic Force Microscopy and Spectroscopy (AFM and AFS) and Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy (STM). (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
