Reproducible Fabrication of Scanning Tunneling Microscope Tips

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....

Fabrication of silicon nanostructures with a scanning tunneling microscope

A technique is presented for fabricating Si nanostructures with a scanning tunneling microscope operated in air. The process involves the direct chemical modification of a H-passivated Si( 100) surface and a subsequent liquid etch. The chemically modified portions of the surface can withstand a deep ( > 100 nm) liquid etch of the unmodified regions with no etch degradation of the modified surfa...

Vacuum tunneling of superconducting quasiparticles from atomically sharp scanning tunneling microscope tips

We report on the study of atomically sharp superconducting tips for scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. The results clearly show vacuum tunneling of superconducting quasiparticles from atomically sharp tips. Observed deviations of the energy gap of the superconducting tip from its bulk value are attributed to the proximity effect. We show that a combination of a superconducting tip ...

Simulating Scanning Tunneling Microscope

Highly reproducible low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy with in situ prepared tips.

An in situ tip preparation procedure compatible with ultra-low temperature and high magnetic field scanning tunneling microscopes is presented. This procedure does not require additional preparation techniques such as thermal annealing or ion milling. It relies on the local electric-field-induced deposition of material from the tip onto the studied surface. Subsequently, repeated indentations a...