Scanning Tunneling Microscopy in Surface Science

This chapter is organized as follows. In Section 2 basic principles of STM imaging are introduced, and the imaging methodology as well as practical and instrumentation requirements are discussed. The approach taken in surface imaging by STM is illustrated by the example of silicon surfaces. Section 3 highlights an application of STM that has gained ever-increasing importance: atomic scale spectroscopy. It provides a survey of the spectroscopy capabilities of STM, and introduces a variety of techniques for local spectroscopy and spectroscopic imaging. In addition, pathways toward obtaining chemical and element specificity at the atomic scale—traditionally a weakness of STM—are discussed. The extension of the operating conditions of STM to high and low temperatures has opened up new avenues of investigation. Variable temperature STM of dynamic surface processes as well as atom and molecule manipulation at cryogenic temperatures are the topics of Section 4. Section 5 discusses STM imaging and spectroscopy on subsurface structures, using ballistic electrons to probe buried interfaces or cross-sectional STM on cleavage faces of III–V semiconductors to image embedded nanostructures. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of STM image simulation techniques in Section 6.