An embodiment of the invention provides a single crystal cleaved from a larger crystal and having a cleavage surface that extends along a natural crystallographic plane of the single crystal, the cleavage surface produced by generating a stress field to propagate a crack in the larger crystal along the natural plane, so that during cracking by the stress field a magnitude of a derivative of an energy release rate, G(α), generated by the stress field at a front of the crack as a function of angular deviation, α, from the natural plane, is less than or equal to twice an effective step energy, βe, divided by a step height, h.