Design of an extremely stable low-temperature ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscope

Abstract

The design and performance of a scanning tunneling microscope operated under ultrahigh vacuum conditions and at low temperature are presented. It allows operating temperatures between 6 K to at least 30 K as well as safe and fast tip/sample transfers. Novel design features resulted in an extremely stable instrument with a noise level of only 0.2 pmrms in the frequency range of 0.5-500 Hz despite a relatively noisy laboratory environment. To demonstrate this behavior, results of test measurements performed on Au(111) and Nb(110) samples are presented. © 2006 American Institute of Physics.