Chung Pei-Fang, Venkatesan Balaji, Su Chih-Chuan, Chang Jen-Te, Cheng Hsu-Kai, Liu Che-An, Yu Henry, Chang Chia-Seng, Guan Syu-You, Chuang Tien-Ming
Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan.
Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan.
Rev Sci Instrum. 2024 Mar 1;95(3). doi: 10.1063/5.0189100.
A spectroscopic imaging-scanning tunneling microscope (SI-STM) allows for the atomic scale visualization of the surface electronic and magnetic structure of novel quantum materials with a high energy resolution. To achieve the optimal performance, a low vibration facility is required. Here, we describe the design and performance of an ultrahigh vacuum STM system supported by a hybrid vibration isolation system that consists of a pneumatic passive and a piezoelectric active vibration isolation stage. We present the detailed vibrational noise analysis of the hybrid vibration isolation system, which shows that the vibration level can be suppressed below 10-8 m/sec/√Hz for most frequencies up to 100 Hz. Combined with a rigid STM design, vibrational noise can be successfully removed from the tunneling current. We demonstrate the performance of our STM system by taking high resolution spectroscopic maps and topographic images on several quantum materials. Our results establish a new strategy to achieve an effective vibration isolation system for high-resolution STM and other scanning probe microscopies to investigate the nanoscale quantum phenomena.
光谱成像扫描隧道显微镜（SI - STM）能够以高能量分辨率对新型量子材料的表面电子和磁结构进行原子尺度的可视化。为实现最佳性能，需要一个低振动设备。在此，我们描述了一种由气动被动和压电主动振动隔离级组成的混合振动隔离系统支撑的超高真空STM系统的设计与性能。我们给出了混合振动隔离系统的详细振动噪声分析，结果表明，在高达100 Hz的大多数频率下，振动水平可被抑制到10^(-8) m/sec/√Hz以下。结合刚性STM设计，可成功从隧道电流中去除振动噪声。我们通过在几种量子材料上获取高分辨率光谱图和形貌图像来展示我们STM系统的性能。我们的结果为实现用于高分辨率STM和其他扫描探针显微镜以研究纳米尺度量子现象的有效振动隔离系统建立了一种新策略。
