The ReactorSTM: atomically resolved scanning tunneling microscopy under high-pressure, high-temperature catalytic reaction conditions

C T Herbschleb; P C van der Tuijn; S B Roobol; V Navarro; J W Bakker; Q Liu; D Stoltz; M E Cañas-Ventura; G Verdoes; M A van Spronsen; M Bergman; L Crama; I Taminiau; A Ofitserov; G J C van Baarle; J W M Frenken

doi:10.1063/1.4891811

The ReactorSTM: atomically resolved scanning tunneling microscopy under high-pressure, high-temperature catalytic reaction conditions

Rev Sci Instrum. 2014 Aug;85(8):083703. doi: 10.1063/1.4891811.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Huygens-Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory, Leiden University, P.O. box 9504, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
² Leiden Probe Microscopy B.V., J.H. Oortweg 21, 2333 CH Leiden, The Netherlands.

PMID: 25173272
DOI: 10.1063/1.4891811

Abstract

To enable atomic-scale observations of model catalysts under conditions approaching those used by the chemical industry, we have developed a second generation, high-pressure, high-temperature scanning tunneling microscope (STM): the ReactorSTM. It consists of a compact STM scanner, of which the tip extends into a 0.5 ml reactor flow-cell, that is housed in a ultra-high vacuum (UHV) system. The STM can be operated from UHV to 6 bars and from room temperature up to 600 K. A gas mixing and analysis system optimized for fast response times allows us to directly correlate the surface structure observed by STM with reactivity measurements from a mass spectrometer. The in situ STM experiments can be combined with ex situ UHV sample preparation and analysis techniques, including ion bombardment, thin film deposition, low-energy electron diffraction and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The performance of the instrument is demonstrated by atomically resolved images of Au(111) and atom-row resolution on Pt(110), both under high-pressure and high-temperature conditions.