ABSTRACT

The development of the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) [1] was a revelation to the scientific community, enabling surface atomic features to be imaged in air with remarkably simple apparatus. The STM earned Binnig and Rohrer the Nobel prize for physics in 1986, and set the stage for a series of scanning probe microscopies (SPMs) based on a host of different physical principles, many of the techniques displaying nanometre resolution or better.