A 10 mK Scanning Probe Microscopy Facility

Published

December 29, 2010

Author(s)

Young J. Song, Alexander F. Otte, Steven R. Blankenship, Alan H. Band, Frank M. Hess, Young Kuk, Vladimir Shvarts, Zuyu Zhao, Joseph A. Stroscio

Abstract

We describe the design, development and performance of a scanning probe microscopy (SPM) facility operating at a base temperature of 10 mK in magnetic fields up to 15 T. The microscope is cooled by a custom designed, fully ultra-high vacuum (UHV) compatible dilution refrigerator and is capable of in-situ tip and sample exchange. Sub-picometer stability at the tip-sample junction is achieved through three independent vibration isolation stages and careful design of the dilution refrigerator. The system can be connected to, or disconnected from, a network of interconnected auxiliary UHV chambers for tip/sample preparations and analysis. These include MBE growth chambers for metal and semiconductor samples, a field ion microscope for tip characterization, and a fully independent quick access STM/AFM system. We present cooling performance, noise measurements, and high energy resolution tunneling spectroscopy results on SiC grown epitaxial graphene.

Citation

Review of Scientific Instruments

Volume

81

Issue

12

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

scanning probe microscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, cryogenic, dilution refrigerator

Citation

Song, Y. , Otte, A. , Blankenship, S. , Band, A. , Hess, F. , Kuk, Y. , Shvarts, V. , Zhao, Z. and Stroscio, J. (2010), A 10 mK Scanning Probe Microscopy Facility, Review of Scientific Instruments, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=906211 (Accessed October 10, 2024)