Compact design of a transmission electron microscope-scanning tunneling microscope holder with three-dimensional coarse motion

Abstract

A scanning tunneling microscope ͑STM͒ with a compact, three-dimensional, inertial slider design is presented. Inertial sliding of the STM tip, in three dimensions, enables coarse motion and scanning using only one piezoelectric tube. Using the same electronics both for scanning and inertial sliding, step lengths of less than 5% of the piezo range were achieved. The compact design, less than 1 cm 3 in volume, ensures a low mechanical noise level and enables us to fit the STM into the sample holder of a transmission electron microscope ͑TEM͒, while maintaining atomic scale resolution in both STM and TEM imaging.

Two‐probe electrical measurements in transmission electron microscopes—Behavioral control of tungsten microwires

“…This microscope is equipped with an Omega energy filter, a NORAN System SIX with a SiLi thin window detector for energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and a 1k 3 1k slow-scan charge coupled device (CCD) camera (Bando et al, 2001). The single-tilt, side-entry piezoholder used in this study has scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) capabilities and is commercialized by Nanofactory Instruments AB (Svensson et al, 2003). As illustrated in Figure 1, two electrodes sit oppositely.…”

Measurements of the critical strain for rippling in carbon nanotubes

“…The tip was attached to a tube-scanner that enables both coarse and fine motion in three dimensions. 16 Forcedisplacement, F-␦, curves were obtained by pushing individual CNTs against the AFM cantilever in a cantilever-tocantilever fashion, see Fig. 1.…”

Combining Scanning Probe Microscopy and Transmission Electron Microscopy

“…The detailed construction of the springs limits the coarse motion to around 1 mm (in all three directions), which is enough to cover the typical sample area inside a TEM. The friction force is also large enough to allow physical manipulations of nanostructures with the tip, as these are generally in the N range or lower, while the friction force of the tip holder is in the range of hundreds of mN [35]. This construction can be adapted to any side-entry TEM, and the instrument can be further customized on the fixed side to accommodate special samples, such as those with several electrodes.…”

“…The first real attempts at full three-dimensional coarse motion were presented by Olin et al [32]. In this approach, a coarse motion mechanism was fitted to the end of the piezo scanner tube, thus allowing full three-dimensional coarse and fine motion while maintaining atomic level resolution in both STM and TEM mode [35]. Figure 3.4 shows the TEM sample with this coarse motion incorporated.…”