Scanning tunneling microscopic investigation on morphology of magnetic Weyl semimetal YbMnBi₂

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. (special topic)