Surface Relaxations, Current Enhancements, and Absolute Distances in High Resolution Scanning Tunneling Microscopy
arXiv:cond-mat/0106534 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.236104
Abstract
We have performed the most realistic simulation to date of the operation of a scanning tunneling microscope. Probe-sample distances from beyond tunneling to actual surface contact are covered. We simultaneously calculate forces, atomic displacements, and tunneling currents, allowing quantitative comparison with experimental values. A distance regime below which the probe becomes unstable is identified. It is shown that the real distance differs substantially from previous estimates because of large atomic displacements on the surface and at the probe-tip.
Four pages (RevTeX) and four figures (EPS). Now published in PRL
Cited by in corpus (13)
- Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of high-temperature superconductors
- Atom Transfer and Single-Adatom Contacts
- Kondo effect by controlled cleavage of a single molecule contact
- Probing the shape of atoms in real space
- Single atom adhesion in optimized gold nanojunctions
- Scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy of sodium-chloride overlayers on the stepped Cu(311) surface: Experimental and theoretical study
- Atomically Resolved Spin-Dependent Tunnelling on the Oxygen-Terminated Fe3O4 (111)
- Force and Conductance during contact formation to a C60 molecule
- Role of tip size, orientation, and structural relaxations in first-principles studies of magnetic exchange force microscopy and spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy
- Simultaneous current-, force- and work function measurement with atomic resolution
- Site-dependent evolution of electrical conductance from tunneling to atomic point contact
- Tip effects in scanning tunnelling microscopy of atomic-scale magnetic structures
- Determining surface magnetization and local magnetic moments with atomic scale resolution