🚀 go-pugleaf

gbloom@nyx.cs.du.edu (Gregory Bloom) writes:

>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?

>Is 'rolling your own' STM merely unlikely, or am I asking something
>more like 'how do I build a space shuttle in my backyard?'

>Gregory Bloom
>gbloom@nyx.cs.du.edu

It would be quite possible to build an AFM/STM given time and patience.
The actual mechanism is fairly simple.  I am sure that there would be 
a very large amount of difficulty in actual fine tuning the instrument,
and wouldn't be very easy for a very skilled electrician, let alone
someone who may have less experience.  As far as the piezo you could
use any crystal that you thought was reliable in its movement. 
Mind you by reliable I mean to the accuracy of the instrument you
want to produce.  The point is a tinker may be able to 'rough out'
a microscope with optical-microscope capabilities, but if you want 
true atomic resolution or micrometer AFM resolution you have got alot of
work in fine tuning.  I have worked on AFM/STM for a year or so and still
have only a basic idea as to their workings, their concept is simple, the trick
is the accuracy of imaging.  For example, the vibration in an average desk
sitting in a quiet room preceived to be motionless by human detectors,
is far to violent to even hope to use your AFM/STM.
As for the STM/AFM tips, they are available comercially, they are costly,
but not hard to get.

In other words, It would be extremely dificult for a person who throughly
understood all aspects of AFM/STM workings, including computer interface,
electronics, and control, to actually build an AFM/STM although 'possible'

For me, it would be most impossible, and I am not nessicarily ignorant of
the workings of these machines.  It would help to have a team of designers
and nearly unlimited funding, and if you had that you might as well go 
buy one.
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