CHINESE JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS VOLUME 31, NUMBER 5 OCTOBER 27, 2018
ARTICLE
A Simple, Compact and Rigid Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Wei-feng Gea, Ji-hao Wangb, Yu-bin Houb, Qing-you Lua,b,c∗
a. Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Tech-
nology of China, Hefei 230026, China
b. Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Condensed Matter Physics at Extreme Conditions, High Magnetic
Field Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China
c. Collaborative Innovation Center for Artificial Microstructure and Quantum Control, Nanjing Univer-
sity, Nanjing 210093, China
(Dated: Received on December 22, 2017; Accepted on February 27, 2018)
We present a homebuilt scanning tunneling microscope (STM) which employs an inner-wall
polished sapphire guiding tube as a rail for the scanner to form a short tip-sample mechanical
loop. The scanner is mounted on a square rod which is housed in the guiding tube and held
by a spring strip. The stiff sapphire guiding tube allows the STM body to be made in a
simple, compact and rigid form. Also the material of sapphire improves the thermal stability
of the STM for its good thermal conductivity. To demonstrate the performance of the STM,
high quality atomic-resolution STM images of high oriented pyrolytic graphite were given.
Key words: Scanning tunneling microscope, Sapphire guiding tube, Finite element analy-
ses, Atomic-resolution image
I. INTRODUCTION
The scanning tunneling micros