Polar (100) surfaces of commercial CdTe and Cd(Zn)Te single crystals were prepared by ion sputtering and annealing at different temperatures and under Te flux, Cd flux, or in ultrahigh vacuum. Various surface reconstructions with high structural order were obtained. Soft x-ray photoemission investigations of the Cd and Te 3d surface core-level shifts were employed to derive the surface termination, revealing Cd-terminated surfaces for most preparations and various reconstructions. The results suggest that sputter/annealing cycles are suitable for the preparation of highly ordered and uniformly terminated substrates for semiconductor heterojunctions on CdTe and Cd(Zn)Te without the need of an additional buffer layer. ©1997 American Institute of Physics.