We investigate the dependence of selective liquid-phase epitaxial growth of GaAs microtips on different masks, including SiO2 films deposited by liquid-phase deposition and magnetron sputtering separately, aluminium film prepared by vacuum evaporation, and AlGaAs film grown by liquid-phase epitaxy. Scanning electron microscopy is employed to characterize the surface morphologies of the GaAs microtips. The results indicate that well-distributed microtips with high quality can be achieved using either SiO2 film deposited by magnetron sputtering or aluminium film prepared by vacuum evaporation as mask. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.