Atomic force microscope-assisted scanning tunneling spectroscopy under ambient conditions

Amin Vakhshouri; Katsushi Hashimoto; Yoshiro Hirayama

doi:10.1093/jmicro/dfu028

Atomic force microscope-assisted scanning tunneling spectroscopy under ambient conditions

Microscopy (Oxf). 2014 Dec;63(6):475-9. doi: 10.1093/jmicro/dfu028. Epub 2014 Aug 21.

Authors

Amin Vakhshouri¹, Katsushi Hashimoto², Yoshiro Hirayama³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8578, Japan amin-v@s.tohoku.ac.jp.
² Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8578, Japan JST, ERATO Nuclear Spin Electronics Project, Sendai 980-8578, Japan.
³ Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8578, Japan JST, ERATO Nuclear Spin Electronics Project, Sendai 980-8578, Japan WPI-AIMR, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan.

PMID: 25145648
DOI: 10.1093/jmicro/dfu028

Abstract

We have developed a method of atomic force microscopy (AFM)-assisted scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) under ambient conditions. An AFM function is used for rapid access to a selected position prior to performing STS. The AFM feedback is further used to suppress vertical thermal drift of the tip-sample distance during spectroscopy, enabling flexible and stable spectroscopy measurements at room temperature.

Keywords: combined atomic force/tunneling microscopy; room temperature tunneling spectroscopy; thermal drift suppression.