A reproducible method to fabricate atomically sharp tips for scanning tunneling microscopy
- 1 August 1999
- journal article
- research article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Review of Scientific Instruments
- Vol. 70 (8), 3373-3376
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1149921
Abstract
The electrochemicaletching method by Ibe et al. [J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 8, 3570 (1990)] to fabricate sharp tips for scanning tunneling microscopy was modified by shortening the cutoff time of the etching current after the material wire drops off at the air-electrolyte interface. The tip radius measured by field ion microscopy was successfully reduced to 8 nm when the cutoff time was shortened to 50 ns. The dependence of the field-emitting electron current from the sharpest tips was close to one expected from the Fowler–Nordheim formula with a reasonable value for the emitting area of the tip.Keywords
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