Lecture 6 STM
Lecture 6 STM
The scanner
can be Five basic components:
mounted with
the tip or the
sample stage. 1. Metal tip,
2. Piezoelectric scanner,
4. Bipotentiostat (bias),
STM is really
small in size.
In a metal, the energy When the specimen and the If the distance d between
levels of the electrons are tip are brought close to each specimen and tip is small
filled up to a particular other, there is only a narrow enough, electrons can ‘tunnel’
energy, known as the region of empty space left through the vacuum barrier.
‘Fermi energy’ EF. In between them. On either When a voltage V is applied
order for an electron to side, the electrons are between specimen and tip, the
leave the metal, it needs present up to the Fermi tunneling effect results in a net
an additional amount of energy. They need to electron current. In this example
energy F, the so-called overcome a barrier F to from specimen to tip. This is the
‘work function’. travel from tip to specimen or tunneling current.
vice versa.
Electron density of states: Fermi level
Electron density of states: Fermi level
• The electrons fill up the energy valley in the sample until there are no
more electrons.
• The top energy level at which electrons sit is called the Fermi level, eF.
• For every energy e, the density of states is the number of electrons
sitting within De of e, divided by De. So, for the energy shown above as
a blue strip, DOS(e) is approximately 7 / De.
Tip and Sample: lined up exactly under zero bias
The electrons in the tip and the sample are sitting in two separate
valleys, separated by a hill which is the vacuum barrier.
Electron density of states: Fermi level
• Electrons are happy sitting in either the tip or the sample, i.e. they're sitting in nice
energy valleys.
• It takes energy to remove an electron into free space. We can think of the vacuum
around the tip as an energy hill that the electron would need to climb in order to
escape. The height of this energy hill is called the work function, f.
• In order to bring an electron up and over the vacuum energy barrier from the tip into
the sample (or vice versa), we would need to supply a very large amount of energy.
• Climbing hills is hard work!
• Luckily for us, quantum mechanics tells us that the electron can tunnel right through
the barrier. Note: this only works for particles (with both wave and particle
characteristics, i.e., wave-particle duality), not for macroscopic objects. Don't you try
walking through any closed doors! J
• As long as both the tip and the sample are held at the same electrical potential, their
Fermi levels line up exactly. There are no empty states on either side available for
tunneling into! This is why we apply a bias voltage between the tip and the sample.
Tunneling current at bias
By applying a bias voltage to the sample with respect to the tip, we effectively raise the Fermi
level of the sample with respect to the tip. Now we have empty states available for tunneling into.
Tunneling Current
• A thin metal tip is brought in close proximity of the sample
surface. At a distance of only a few Å, the overlap of tip
and sample electron wavefunctions is large enough for an
electron tunneling to occur.
• When an electrical voltage V is applied between sample
and tip, this tunneling phenomenon results in a net
electrical current, the ‘tunneling current’. This current
depends on the tip-surface distance d, on the voltage V,
and on the height of the barrier F:
• This (approximate) equation shows that the tunneling
current obeys Ohm’s law, i.e. the current I is proportional
to the voltage V.
• The current depends exponentially on the distance d.
• For a typical value of the work function F of 4 eV for a
metal, the tunneling current reduces by a factor ~10 for
every 0.1 nm increase in d. This means that over a typical
F: the work function (energy barrier), atomic diameter of e.g. 0.3 nm, the tunneling current
e: the electron charge, changes by a factor ~1000! This is what makes the STM
m: the electron mass, so sensitive.
h: the Planck’s constant,
V: applied voltage, • The tunneling current depends so strongly on the distance
d: tip-sample distance. that it is dominated by the contribution flowing between the
last atom of the tip and the nearest atom in the specimen
Next page: F of common metals. --- single-atom imaging!
Work Function of Common Metals
Metal F(eV)
(Work Function)
Ag (silver) 4.26
Al (aluminum) 4.28
Au (gold) 5.1
Cs (cesium) 2.14
Cu (copper) 4.65
Li (lithium) 2.9
Pb (lead) 4.25
Sn (tin) 4.42
Chromium 4.6
Molybdenum 4.37
Stainless Steel 4.4
Gold 4.8
Tungsten 4.5
Copper 4.5
Nickel 4.6
Basic components of STM:
The scanner
can be Five basic components:
mounted with
the tip or the
sample stage. 1. Metal tip,
2. Piezoelectric scanner,
4. Bipotentiostat (bias),
• The principle of the STM is based on the strong distance dependence of the quantum
mechanical tunneling effect.
• Maintaining a constant tunneling current by adjusting the height with a piezo-electric crystal,
and monitoring the piezo voltage while scanning, allows one to image a surface, under ideal
conditions, to atomic resolution. (If the tip is scanned over the sample surface while an electronic
feedback loop keeps the tunneling current constant ( constant current mode), the tip height follows a
contour of constant local density of electronic states and provides information on the topography of
the sample surface if the surface is composed of the same atoms.)
• Most of the tunneling current flows through a single protruding atom on the tip and thus sub-
angstrom resolution in z can be achieved on a clean surface with a sharp tip.
• The x-y resolution is somewhat larger.
STM: constant current mode
Raster Scanning of STM: 2D imaging
Constant height Constant current
mode mode
Principle of scanning tunneling microscopy: Applying a negative sample voltage yields electron
tunneling from occupied states at the surface into unoccupied states of the tip. Keeping the
tunneling current constant while scanning the tip over the surface, the tip height follows a
contour of constant local density of states.
Factors affecting the resolution
• One of the factors affecting resolution is corrugation, i.e. how much the electron
density of surface atoms varies in height above the surface.
• Graphite has a large corrugation, and is very planar, and thus is one of the easiest
materials to image with atomic resolution. (see next slide for example)
• STM does NOT probe the nuclear position directly, but rather it is a probe of the
local density of electronic states , so STM images do not always show the
position of the atoms. STM imaging depends on the nature of the surface and the
magnitude and sign of the tunneling current. For example, if you have Cu and Si on the
same surface, under the same condition, the current with Cu is much higher .
• Since STM images the outermost atom on sample surface, UHV is normally
required to assure no surface contamination (e.g., coverage of air molecules or
water) so as to image single atoms or at atomic resolution.
Copied from: http://nanoprobes.aist-nt.com/apps/HOPG%20info.htm
6 carbons in a ring can be classified into 3 A (α) and a B (β) atoms according to their positions relative the
lower layer of graphene. B (β) atoms , not sitting atop an atom underneath, gives high tunneling current(
“visible”) when imaged under constant height mode, as seen from above result.
constant current mode
(a) (Color online) Experimental STM image of HOPG at constant-current mode, Vb=−50 mV. (b) Calculated
STM image at constant-height mode, Vb=−50 mV, and tip-surface distance of 1.2 Å. The triangular structure is
visualized in both images. (c) And (d) line profiles along the lines indicated in Figs. 1(a) and 1(b), respectively.
https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.79.205431#fulltext
Constant height mode
(a) (Color online) Experimental STM image of HOPG at constant-height mode, Vb=−300 mV. (b) Calculated
STM image at constant-height mode, Vb=−300 mV, and tip surface distance of 1.2 Å. Both images reveal
the hexagonal atomic structure which is compound by α and β atoms. (c) And (d) are line profiles along the
lines indicated in (a) and (b), respectively.
STM image of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG)
77 K 29 Å x 29 Å 295 K 37 Å x 37 Å
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE2yE
8SvHmA
More about STM imaging of HOPG (0111) surface
Basically, the highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) crystal is formed by layers of
honeycomb atomic array of carbon atoms with interatomic distance of 1.42 Å (a single layer
is called graphene). The layers are held together by van der Waals forces and they present
an ABAB stacking sequence. This stacking sequence gives rise to a 4-carbon atom unit cell
with two nonequivalent atomic sites: the α-type-sites, atoms with neighbors directly above
and below in adjacent layers, and the β-type-sites, atoms without such neighbors 15 (in
what follows α and β atoms, respectively).
The widely accepted theory for STM image formation of Tománek et al. 12 predicts, for low-
bias voltages, that only β atoms are visible as a consequence of the asymmetry in the
interlayer interaction in the bulk graphite. Such asymmetry occurs due to the higher local
density of states (LDOS) of the β atoms compared with α atoms near the Fermi level. This
(often called triangular) electronic surface structure has a unit cell length of about 2.46
Å corresponding to the periodicity of the lattice, and it is usually reported in the STM
experiments.1,2 I
https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.79.205431#fulltext