DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE OF A PROGRAMMABLE-TEMPERATURE SCANNING TUNNELING MICROSCOPE

In this article we introduce a novel scanning tunneling microscope (ST M), which operates in a sample temperature range from 60 to at least 8 50 K. The most important new feature of this STM is that, while one se lected part of the surface is kept within the microscope's field of vi ew, the sample temperature can be varied over a wide range of several hundreds of degrees during actual imaging. The extremely low drift of the scanner and sample was achieved by the combination of a thermal-dr ift compensated piezoelectric scanner design with a newly developed sa mple stage. The design of the sample stage defines a fixed center from which thermal expansions, in all three directions, are forced outward s. The performance of the microscope is demonstrated for several surfa ces including Au(110), on which we follow one particular surface regio n over a temperature range of more than 270 K. (C) 1998 American Insti tute of Physics.