Atomically flat surface preparation for surface-sensitive technologies**Project supported by the Science Fund from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant Nos. 2016YFA0401000, 2016YFA0300600, 2016YFA0302400, 2016YFA0300504, and 2017YFA0302901), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11622435, U1832202, 11474340, 11822412, 11574371, 11674369, 11574394, 11774423, and 11774399), the Fund from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant Nos. QYZDB-SSW-SLH043, XDB07000000,

Abstract

Surface-sensitive measurements are crucial to many types of researches in condensed matter physics. However, it is difficult to obtain atomically flat surfaces of many single crystals by the commonly used mechanical cleavage. We demonstrate that the grind-polish-sputter-anneal method can be used to obtain atomically flat surfaces on topological materials. Three types of surface-sensitive measurements are performed on CoSi (001) surface with dramatically improved quality of data. This method extends the research area of surface-sensitive measurements to hard-to-cleave alloys, and can be applied to irregular single crystals with selective crystalline planes. It may become a routine process of preparing atomically flat surfaces for surface-sensitive technologies.