This is a home-made system fully designed and built at NIMS. The UHV chamber is a modification of the design proposed by Gerhard Meyer, while the microscope is entirely an original design by Oscar. The microscope is inside a liquid helium (LHe) bath cryostat provided by CryoVac. We can cool down both tip and sample down to 4.8 K using LHe, and we can deposit atoms and molecules on the surface while the sample is kept below 16K. We control this AFM/STM microscope using a Nanonis SPM controller. The main AFM piezoelectric sensor we are using is the KolibriSensor, although the microscope is also compatible with a quartz tuning-fork based sensor in a qPlus configuration.

    In this system, both the chamber and the AFM/STM microscope head were designed and assembled by UNISOKU.  The cantilever dynamics is detected using an optical-fiber based interferometer, that was designed and built by Oscar. The microscope head has a X-Y-Z piezo motor to positioning very precisely the end of the optical fiber over the cantilever. We control this AFM/STM microscope using a Nanonis SPM controller. To perform simultaneous STM/AFM measurements in this system, we use commercially available PtIr coated silicon cantilevers from NanoSensors. After a proper treatment of the cantilever tip, these cantilevers can provide simultaneous STM and AFM data with atomic resolution.