O. Nishikawa et al., PERFORMANCE OF THE TRIAL SCANNING ATOM-PROBE - NEW APPROACH TO EVALUATE THE MICROTIP APEX, Journal of vacuum science & technology. B, Microelectronics and nanometer structures processing, measurement and phenomena, 14(3), 1996, pp. 2110-2113
In order to examine the feasibility of realizing the scanning atom pro
be, a trial instrument was constructed by modifying a low-temperature
ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscope (STM). A scanning elect
ron microscope was mounted on the trial instrument to inspect the rela
tive position of both the open hole at the end of the funnel-shaped ex
traction electrode and a cusp apex on a specimen surface. In the preli
minary experiment, a single sharp W tip of the STM and two extraction
electrodes with respective open hole diameters of 10 and 20 mu m were
employed. The tip was brought near the electrode by employing a micros
crew and a piezoactuator as with a conventional STM. The variation of
the field emission current with the position of the center of the hole
relative to the cusp apex was found to be significant enough to bring
the apex precisely to the center of the hole. An interesting finding
was that the field emission was observed from a tip with a radius of m
ore than 2 mu m at a relatively low voltage, indicating that the field
confined to a narrow space between the electrode and the tip apex was
high enough to induce field emission. (C) 1996 American Vacuum Societ
y.