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.