scanning tunneling microscope

scanning tunneling microscope (STM), type of microscope whose principle of operation is based on the quantum mechanical phenomenon known as tunneling, in which the wavelike properties of electrons permit them to “tunnel” beyond the surface of a solid into regions of space that are forbidden to them under the rules of classical physics. The probability of finding such tunneling electrons decreases exponentially as the distance from the surface increases. The STM makes use of this extreme sensitivity to distance. The sharp tip of a tungsten needle is positioned a few angstroms from the sample surface. A small voltage is applied between the probe tip and the surface, causing electrons to tunnel across the gap. As the probe is scanned over the surface, it registers variations in the tunneling current, and this information can be processed to provide a topographical image of the surface.

The STM appeared in 1981, when Swiss physicists Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer set out to build a tool for studying the local conductivity of surfaces. Binnig and Rohrer chose the surface of gold for their first image. When the image was displayed on the screen of a television monitor, they saw rows of precisely spaced atoms and observed broad terraces separated by steps one atom in height. Binnig and Rohrer had discovered in the STM a simple method for creating a direct image of the atomic structure of surfaces. Their discovery opened a new era for surface science, and their impressive achievement was recognized with the award of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1986.

Operating principles

The STM is an electron microscope with a resolution sufficient to resolve single atoms. The sharp tip in the STM is similar to that in the scanning electron microscope (SEM), but the differences in the two instruments are profound. In the SEM, electrons are extracted from the tip with a series of positively charged plates placed a few centimetres downstream from the tip. The electrons at the apex of the tip are confined to the region within the metal by a potential barrier. The attractive force from the positive charge on the plates is sufficient to permit the electrons to overcome the barrier and enter the vacuum as free particles. The apertures in the downstream plates form an electron lens that converts the diverging beam from the tip into a beam converging to a focus on the surface of the sample.

In the STM, the plates that form the lens in the SEM are removed, and the tip is positioned close to the sample. The electrons move through the barrier in a way that is similar to the motion of electrons in a metal. In metals, electrons appear to be freely moving particles, but this is illusory. In reality, the electrons move from atom to atom by tunneling through the potential barrier between two atomic sites. In a typical case, with the atoms spaced five angstroms apart, there is a finite probability that the electron will penetrate the barrier and move to the adjacent atom. The electrons are in motion around the nucleus, and they approach the barrier with a frequency of 10¹⁷ per second. For each approach to the barrier, the probability of tunneling is 10⁻⁴, and the electrons cross the barrier at the rate of 10¹³ per second. This high rate of transfer means that the motion is essentially continuous and tunneling can be ignored in metals.

Tunneling cannot be ignored in the STM; indeed, it is all-important. When the tip is moved close to the sample, the spacing between the tip and the surface is reduced to a value comparable to the spacing between neighbouring atoms in the lattice. In this circumstance, the tunneling electron can move either to the adjacent atoms in the lattice or to the atom on the tip of the probe. The tunneling current to the tip measures the density of electrons at the surface of the sample, and this information is displayed in the image. In semiconductors, such as silicon, the electron density reaches a maximum near the atomic sites. The density maxima appear as bright spots in the image, and these define the spatial distribution of atoms. In metals, on the other hand, the electronic charge is uniformly distributed over the entire surface. The tunneling current image should show a uniform background, but this is not the case. The interaction between tip and sample perturbs the electron density to the extent that the tunneling current is slightly increased when the tip is positioned directly above a surface atom. The periodic array of atoms is clearly visible in the images of materials such as gold, platinum, silver, nickel, and copper.