DESIGN OF A SIMPLE HIGH-RESOLUTION SCANNING TUNNELING MICROSCOPE WITHAN ANALOG SCAN GENERATOR

After the development and use of several scanning tunneling microscope s for different environments (air, UHV and low temperatures) we design ed and built a simple STM. Only standard and affordable components are used, to make this microscope equally applicable to a student laborat ory. The controller generates a very smooth scan with a resolution muc h greater than the digital-to-analogue converters in the control compu ter. In the last 2 years it has proved to be a reliable system with go od resolution. It has been used, for example, to study dye molecules o n silver-bromide surfaces.