Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 59: Oxides and Insulators: Clean Surfaces

O 59.11: Talk

Thursday, March 29, 2007, 18:15–18:30, H41

Imaging the muscovite mica surface by means of high resolution dynamic scanning force microscopy — •Frank Ostendorf, Carsten Schmitz, Sabine Hirth, and Michael Reichling — Fachbereich Physik, Barbarastrasse 7, 49076 Osnabrück

Muscovite mica is a widespread substrate for many applications, for instance in biology and material science. Mica is famous for its large atomically flat terraces after cleavage and its atomic scale structure has been studied by dynamic force microscopy performed in a liquid environment [1]. We investigated air and UHV cleaved mica surfaces in detail by a dynamic force microscope operated in the non-contact mode under ultra-high vacuum conditions. We adapted several appropriated recipes for air cleaved mica preparation techniques from the literature and varied two major parameters, namely degassing temperature and degassing period. It has been found that none of the recipes leads to a true atomically flat and clean surface, even after degassing the sample for several hours at temperatures above 500 Kelvin. On regularly shaped flat nanostructures found on the surface, two different types of atomic scale patterns were observed.

[1] Fukuma T. et al. Appl. Phys. Lett. 87 (2005) 034101