2026/05/23 by Shuai Dong, Yi-Xiang Wang, Jihao Wang +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Surface and Thin Film Phenomena #Mechanical and Optical Resonators
paper · doi:10.1111/jmi.70124
Abstract Coarse stepping motor and imaging scanner are the most important components of the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM). In traditional STMs, a single small‐sized piezoelectric tube is fixed directly to the motor and used as the imaging scanner, the small‐sized scanner can only provide a small imaging area. As a result, those STMs need equipped with X – Y piezo stage to move sample. While the noise generated from coarse stepping motor and X – Y piezo stage, as well as the complex structure will greatly reduce the STM's imaging stability. In this paper, we present an independent scanner structure featuring a double‐piezo‐tube nested design. In this design, both two piezoelectric tubes can be responsible for adjusting the tip‐sample distance; the external scan tube can be used to adjust the position of the sample. The small tip‐sample mechanical loop and compact structure of the scanner ensure the high imaging stability of the new STM. Finally, we constructed a non‐magnetic STM head based on above novel scanner. High‐quality atomic images of the highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) and low drift rates in both X – Y plane and Z directions were obtained at room temperature, demonstrating the high imaging stability of our new STM even at 300 K. Additionally, atomic images and the dI / dV spectra of NbSe 2 obtained at 1.7 K, as well as the atomic images of HOPG obtained at changing magnetic fields from 0 T to 12 T in a vibrational magnet, proving new STM's high stability under low temperature and high magnetic fields.