In 1986, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) and the fact that it could achieve atomic resolution. They observed that if they held a metallic tip of 10 angstrom above a conductive surface, they could measure a tunnelling current in the order of a nanoampere. When the tip was then scanned over the conducting...

Quantum tunnelling is a phenomenon which becomes relevant at the nanoscale and below. It is a paradox from the classical point of view as it enables elementary particles and atoms to permeate an energetic barrier without the need for sufficient energy to overcome it. Tunnelling might seem to be an exotic process only important for special physical effects and applications such as the Tunnel Dio...

We doped graphene in situ during synthesis from methane and ammonia on copper in a low-pressure chemical vapour deposition system, and investigated the effect of the synthesis temperature and ammonia concentration on the growth. Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy was used to investigate the quality and nitrogen content of the graphene and demonstrated that decreasing the synthesis tempe...

Knowledge of and control over the curvature of ripples in freestanding graphene are desirable for fabricating and designing flexible electronic devices, and recent progress in these pursuits has been achieved using several advanced techniques such as scanning tunnelling microscopy. The electrostatic forces induced through a bias voltage (or gate voltage) were used to manipulate the interaction ...

Enhancing the transport contribution of surface states in topological insulators is vital if they are to be incorporated into practical devices. Such efforts have been limited by the defect behaviour of Bi2Te3 (Se3) topological materials, where the subtle bulk carrier from intrinsic defects is dominant over the surface electrons. Compensating such defect carriers is unexpectedly achieved in (Cu...

Phase coexistence phenomena have been intensively studied in strongly correlated materials where several ordered states simultaneously occur or compete. Material properties critically depend on external parameters and boundary conditions, where tiny changes result in qualitatively different ground states. However, up to date, phase coexistence phenomena have exclusively been reported for comple...

Defects play a key role in determining the properties and technological applications of nanoscale materials and, because they tend to be highly localized, characterizing them at the single-defect level is of particular importance. Scanning tunnelling microscopy has long been used to image the electronic structure of individual point defects in conductors, semiconductors and ultrathin films, but...