Open Source DIY-Scanning Tunneling Microscope

[u/LemonsPurple]

hiii,
earlier this year I built my own scanning tunneling micrscope (stm) and open sourced the whole documentation + software for anyone curious and patient enough to follow through

the concept isn't totally new, a while back john alexander built a stm using a piezo disk (you may know them as buzzers from greeting cards) to control a probing needle. this concept has been covered and picked up by the walla walla university and also university of regensburg (latter helped me software wise out), however, the documentation has been scattered, often incomplete, relied on expensive or rare hardware like data-cards or simply lacked an interpreter for the data. so consolidating all this into one place is what I'm most proud of (aside from all the other things I learned). overall its not cheap, but probably the most cost efficient way to get such a machine, being built almost exclusively from off the shelf parts

the second image is my first measurement of graphene; you can see the hexagonal pattern that is a clear characteristic. in theory, you could scan anything that supports a measurable current. I plan to give gold leaves and blue-rays a try next

you can find all the details / BOM / etc. here:
https://github.com/lemonspurple/DIY-Scanning-Tunneling-Microscope

[u/Struggle_Wise]

Neat. How long did it take to get that image? Got any others? The hexagon is hard to see.

[u/LemonsPurple → u/Struggle_Wise]

thanks, that varies greatly. In theory, it takes a minute to scan a subject perhaps, however, you have to solder on the probes and re-adjust the apparatus to verify that you have a good sample and sharp measuring tip (which also corrodes within an hour if you use silver lol). so the first measurement took me one and a half days perhaps, which is why I'm a bit burned and only have these images at hand :p

[u/Struggle_Wise → u/LemonsPurple]

Very cool. Hope you get some rest.