Angle-Resolved Photoemission as a Sensitive Probe of Surface Quality: Sputtered versus Annealed Cu(001)

@misc{na2026angleresolved,
  title = {{Angle-Resolved Photoemission as a Sensitive Probe of Surface Quality: Sputtered versus Annealed Cu(001)}},
  author = {Hyeonhee Na and Jeonghwan Oh and Jinju Lee and Hanjun Sim and Myeongun Go and Jimin Sohn and Jeonggu Kang and Byungmin Sohn},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.16421},
  eprint = {2610.16421},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.16421},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Angle-Resolved Photoemission as a Sensitive Probe of Surface Quality: Sputtered versus Annealed Cu(001)
AU  - Hyeonhee Na
AU  - Jeonghwan Oh
AU  - Jinju Lee
AU  - Hanjun Sim
AU  - Myeongun Go
AU  - Jimin Sohn
AU  - Jeonggu Kang
AU  - Byungmin Sohn
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/12
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.16421
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.16421
AB  - Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) requires a well-ordered surface, whose quality is routinely judged from low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). We compare LEED, XPS, and ARPES of a Cu(001) single crystal measured in situ at four stages of surface preparation: as-prepared, after aging for 24 h at 6 K, after Ar^+ sputtering, and after annealing. The sputtered and annealed surfaces show nearly identical (1×1) LEED patterns and Cu 2p core levels, but the sputtered surface yields a momentum-independent ARPES spectrum, and the band dispersion recovers after annealing. We attribute this contrast to how each probe responds to sputtering-induced defects: LEED reflects the average lattice, which remains periodic, whereas ARPES reflects the electronic states, whose crystal momentum is no longer well defined. Our results indicate that a sharp LEED pattern and clean core-level spectra do not guarantee a surface suitable for ARPES.
ER  -