🚀 go-pugleaf

Re: home built stm

>How hard is it to build an STM or AFM?  Does it seem like a project
>that could be made on the scale of 'The Amateur Scientist' series
>from Scientific American?  I have heard that getting the monatomic
>tipped probe is perhaps the hardest part.  Could standard
>electronics crystals, removed from their cases, be used to position
>the probe?  How noisy can the controlling current be?  How hard is 
>it to observe tunneling current?

I haven't done it but I am planning to.  With a PC and some
electronics hacking it should be possible.  Here are some leads:

K. Besocke, "An Easily Operable Scanning Tunneling Microscope"
Surface Science 181, 145-154, (1987)

R.A. Lewis et al., "Student Scanning Tunneling Microscope"
Am. J. Phys. 59 (1), 38-42, (1991)