title: Reproducible tip fabrication and cleaning for UHV STM.
abstract: Several technical modifications related to the fabrication and ultra-high vacuum (UHV) treatments of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) tips have been implemented to improve a reliability of the tip preparation for high-resolution STM. Widely used electrochemical etching drop-off technique has been further refined to enable a reproducible fabrication of the tips with a radius <or= 3 nm. For tip cleaning by a controllable UHV annealing, simple and flexible setup has been developed. Proper W tip preparation has been demonstrated via an imaging of the TiO2 (110) surface atomic structure.
authors.affiliation: Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory and Institute for Interfacial Catalysis, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, USA.
authors.forename: Z Q
authors.initials: ZQ
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: C M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Du
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Thevuthasan
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lyubinetsky