Calculation of tunneling current across trapezoidal potential barrier in a scanning tunneling microscope

Simulating Scanning Tunneling Microscope

Spatial Repartition of Current Fluctuations in a Scanning Tunneling Microscope

Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) is a technique where the surface topography of a conducting sample is probed by a scanning metallic tip. The tip-to-surface distance is controlled by monitoring the electronic tunneling current between the two metals. The aim of this work is to extend the temporal range of this instrument by characterising the time fluctuations of this current on different su...

Tunneling rates in electron transport through double-barrier molecular junctions in a scanning tunneling microscope.

The scanning tunneling microscope enables atomic-scale measurements of electron transport through individual molecules. Copper phthalocyanine and magnesium porphine molecules adsorbed on a thin oxide film grown on the NiAl(110) surface were probed. The single-molecule junctions contained two tunneling barriers, vacuum gap, and oxide film. Differential conductance spectroscopy shows that electro...

Reproducible Fabrication of Scanning Tunneling Microscope Tips

Reproducible fabrication of Scanning Tunneling Microscope tips is carried out following an electrochemical procedure widely reported. Tips are made from 0.5 diameter tungsten wire. Controlling fabrication parameters (immersion in the electrochemical solution, current-voltage ranges, duration of the process, among others) we achieve aspect ratios of 0.68 and tip radii of 330 nm in the best case....

Theory of the scanning tunneling microscope.

We present a theory for tunneling between a real surface and a model probe tip, applicable to the recently developed "scanning tunneling microscope." The tunneling current is found to be proportional to the local density of states of the surface, at the position of the tip. The effective lateral resolution is related to the tip radius R and the vacuum gap distance d approximately as [(2 A)(R +d...