ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the existing capabilities of spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy and shows how it is applied for mapping surface magnetic domains and spin structures. Fueled by the ever increasing data density in magnetic storage technology and the need for a better understanding of the physical properties of magnetic nanostructures there exists a strong demand for high-resolution magnetically sensitive microscopy techniques. The smallest conceivable magnetic structure is a magnetically ordered surface where the orientations of magnetic moments alternate between adjacent atomic sites, i.e., a so-called g-type antiferromagnet. Structure-induced magnetic frustration, the competition of nearest- and next-nearest neighbor exchange interactions, or the so-called Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactionmay lead to complex two- or even three-dimensional spin structures. For the development of spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy, however, the nanoscale one-to-one correlation between topography and magnetism of Cr represents an advantage as it simplifies the safe identification of magnetic contrasts.
