Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2011
The surface of cleaved Bi2Sr2 CaCu2O3 (Bi2212) single crystals has been studied by means of scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) at room temperature in ultrahigh vacuum. We obtain atomic images of the BiO surface using logarithmic current mode and conventional mode. It is demonstrated that the Bi atoms in the BiO plane are not missing. Some Bi atoms are depressed down below the BiO surface. STS obtained at different places of the surface shows more or less the same feature, indicating that local electronic density of states does not change much due to the depression or the well-known structural modulation. The possible origins of the variation in the period of the structural modulation in the BiO plane of cleaved Bi2212 single crystals extracted from STM images are also studied.