xtick formatting

I have a question about tick formatting. I have a semilogx plot and if I resize the xticks using
locs , labels = xticks ()
set(labels , size=ticksize)
I like the size and the font, but the exponents (10^0) run into the axis.

If I size them using
xticks([1,10],[r'$10^0$',r'$10^1$'],size=ticksize,family='sans=serif')
I can get the position right (i.e. not running into the axis), but I have to set the ticks manually and I can't seem to get away from a math font I don't really like.

Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks,

Ryan