Seeing atoms
2015-01-13 17:47:08.109635+01 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
Home built scanning tunneling microscope:
This project is my attempt to build a low-cost scanning tunneling microscope (STM) capable of atomic resolution imaging in air. The piezo scanners typically used in STM typically cost at least hundreds of dollars. Some time ago I came across John Alexander’s simple STM project, in which he used a cheap piezo buzzer element with one of the electrodes cut into quadrants to enable XYZ motion. This type of scanner is less rigid than what is usually used for STM, but I decided to give it a try and see how far I could get with it. Turns out I was able to image highly-oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) with my STM with atomic resolution! The image below shows the hexagonal lattice structure of graphite.