Exploration on Mechanics Design for Scanning Tunneling Microscope

With the invention of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) in the early 1980s by Binnig and Rohrer, real-space access to structures on the atomic scale became possible. For STM, four things are of great important: preparation of the tips, approach mechanism, vibration isolation and piezo device. In this paper, we´ll try to describe the main method to prepare tips, and the result of our experiments on preparation of tips. Then we´ll introduce methods to make a fine approach mechanism and present our new method. At last there will be a brief introduction of vibration isolation and different mechanical design that make the tip move in three axes.