Yu Z Q, Wang C M, Du Y, Thevuthasan S, Lyubinetsky I
Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory and Institute for Interfacial Catalysis, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, USA.
Ultramicroscopy. 2008 Aug;108(9):873-7. doi: 10.1016/j.ultramic.2008.02.010. Epub 2008 Mar 13.
Several technical modifications related to the fabrication and ultra-high vacuum (UHV) treatments of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) tips have been implemented to improve a reliability of the tip preparation for high-resolution STM. Widely used electrochemical etching drop-off technique has been further refined to enable a reproducible fabrication of the tips with a radius <or= 3 nm. For tip cleaning by a controllable UHV annealing, simple and flexible setup has been developed. Proper W tip preparation has been demonstrated via an imaging of the TiO2 (110) surface atomic structure.
