An ultrahigh vacuum dual-tip scanning tunneling microscope operating at 4.2 K

The design and performance of an ultrahigh vacuum compatible cryogenic dual-tip scanning tunneling microscope is described. The microscope is attached at the bottom of a low-loss liquid helium Dewar and can be operated down to 4.2 K. The coarse positioning system consists of five linear steppers driven by piezo-tubes. The displacement of each stepper can be monitored by its own embedded capacitive position sensor with a submicron resolution, thus allowing accurate control of the tip navigation process. An alignment procedure, using a specimen made of three mutually nonparallel planes, is introduced to bring the two tips into overlapped scan ranges without the help of an additional guiding device such as an electron microscope. The overall system exhibits good mechanical rigidity and atomic resolution has been achieved with either tip. This instrument is well suited for investigating low temperature quantum properties of atomically clean nanostructures in a three-terminal configuration. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.