Free surface waves of arbitrary form in a homogeneous and isotropic linear micropolar thermoelastic half-space with stress-free plane boundary are investigated. It is found that all physical quantities associated with the waves are derivable from two scalar functions and that there exist two families of waves in general. One of these is the classical thermoelastic wave modified under the influence of the microelastic field and the other is a new surface wave not encountered in classical elasticity. The waves are not necessarily plane waves and even when these are assumed to propagate in a fixed direction parallel to the boundary, unlike in classical elasticity, the problem is not one of plane strain. Explicit expressions for the displacement vector, microrotation vector and the temperature are obtained and the nature of deformation has been analysed. Several earlier results are deduced as particular cases of the more general results obtained here.