Abstract
Muscovite mica is an important mineral that has become a standard substrate, due to itseasy cleavage along the {001} planes, revealing a very flat surface that is compatible withmany biological materials. Here we study mica surfaces by dynamic atomic forcemicroscopy (AFM) operated in the non-contact mode (NC-AFM) under ultra-high vacuum(UHV) conditions. Surfaces produced by cleaving in UHV cannot be imaged with NC-AFMdue to large surface charges; however, cleavage in air yields much less surfacecharge and allows for NC-AFM imaging. We present highly resolved NC-AFMimages of air-cleaved mica surfaces revealing a rough morphology originatingfrom a high density of nanometre-sized particles. Among these particles, we findregularly shaped structures indicating the growth of crystallites on the surface. Thecontamination layer cannot be removed by degassing in UHV; even prolonged heating at atemperature of 560 K under UHV conditions does not yield an atomically flat surface.
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