Design and performance of a beetle-type double-tip scanning tunneling microscope

Abstract

A combination of a double-tip scanning tunneling microscope with a scanning electron microscope in ultrahigh vacuum environment is presented. The compact beetle-type design made it possible to integrate two independently driven scanning tunneling microscopes in a small space. Moreover, an additional level for coarse movement allows the decoupling of the translation and approach of the tunneling tip. The position of the two tips can be controlled from the millimeter scale down to 50 nm with the help of an add-on electron microscope. The instrument is capable of atomic resolution imaging with each tip.

Dual-probe spectroscopic fingerprints of defects in graphene

“…Such setups have been achieved experimentally [23][24][25][26][27][28] and the recent progress is reviewed in detail in Refs. [29,30].…”

Single-Particle Phenomena in Magnetic Nanostructures

“…This method relies on a small tunneling current that passes from an atomically flat metallic or semiconducting surface into a fine tip placed in close proximity. This method has shown an extraordinary spatial resolution and is commonly used to map surface crystallographies in real space with atomic resolution [194]. The STM technique is sensitive to the density of electronic states in both surface and tip and has been developed into scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) [195,196].…”

Four-probe measurements with a three-probe scanning tunneling microscope

“…Several groups have developed unique approaches for the construction and operation of multiple probe systems, [3][4][5][6][7][8] most of them facing the same issues. The need to get the probes together in a very small area of the order of microns suggests the use of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) for tip alignment.…”