CONTROLLED ATOM BY ATOM RESTRUCTURING OF A METAL-SURFACE WITH THE SCANNING TUNNELING MICROSCOPE

We report the ability to completely restructure a metal surface by pre cision manipulation of individual atoms with the scanning tunneling mi croscope: Besides extracting atoms from kink sites on Cu(211) we are n ow also able to ''dig out'' atoms from the even more strongly bound in trinsic step sites and thus to create adatom-vacancy pairs. Together w ith the processes of moving adatoms along and across intrinsic step ed ges and the possibility of healing out adatom-vacancy pairs, we have a complete set of lateral manipulation processes at hand. The reliabili ty of all these processes opens up exciting ''engineering'' possibilit ies for structuring of extended surface areas.