Compact Scanning Tunneling Microscope with Large Scale Searching Capability for Mmultidisciplinary Applications

We present the design and performance of a home-built scanning tunneling microscope (STM), which is compact (66 mm tall and 25 mm in diameter), yet equipped with a 3D atomic precision piezoelectric motor in which the Z coarse approach relies on a high simplic-ity friction-type walker (of our own invention) driven by an axially cut piezoelectric tube. The walker is vertically inserted in a piezoelectric scanner tube (PST) with its brim laying at on the PST end as the inertial slider (driven by the PST) for the XZ (sample plane) motion. The STM is designed to be capable of searching rare microscopic targets (defects, dopants, boundaries, nano-devices, etc.) in a macroscopic sample area (square millimeters) under extreme conditions (low temperatures, strong magnetic elds, etc.) in which it ts. It gives good atomic resolution images after scanning a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite sample in air at room temperature.