Scanning tunneling microscopic investigation on morphology of magnetic Weyl semimetal YbMnBi2 *

Abstract

YbMnBi2 is a recently discovered time-reversal-symmetry breaking type-II Weyl semimetal. However, as a representation of the new category of topological matters, the scanning tunneling microcopy (STM) results on such important material are still absent. Here, we report the STM investigations on the morphology of vacuum cleaved single crystalline YbMnBi2 samples. A hill and valley type of topography is observed on the YbMnBi2 surface, which is consistent with the non-layer nature of its crystal structure. Analysis of STM images yields the information of the index of the vicinal surface. Our results here lay a playground of future atomic scale research on YbMnBi2.