Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
Polar ZnO(0001)-Zn surfaces can be prepared as very well defined and single crystalline surfaces by hydroxide stabilization simply by introducing hydroxides via a wet chemical cleaning step. Within this proceeding we present an in-situ AFM imaging of the crystallization process. The pH dependent stability of the resulting hydroxide-stabilized surfaces was further investigated by means of an ex-situ LEED approach. These investigations show, that it is possible to obtain high quality single crystalline ZnO(0001)-Zn surfaces in a simple way. Moreover, these surfaces turned out to be very stable within a wide range of pH values between 11 and 3 of NaClO4 based 1mM electrolyte solutions.