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Contact resistance and saturation effects in the scanning tunnelling microscope: the resistance quantum unit
Author(s) -
MartínRodero A.,
Ferrer J.,
Flores F.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
journal of microscopy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.569
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1365-2818
pISSN - 0022-2720
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2818.1988.tb01392.x
Subject(s) - quantum tunnelling , scanning tunneling microscope , condensed matter physics , microscope , materials science , instability , saturation (graph theory) , contact resistance , optics , nanotechnology , physics , quantum mechanics , mathematics , combinatorics , layer (electronics)
SUMMARY We present a theoretical analysis of the contact resistance in the Scanning Tunnelling Microscope. Under the assumption of a single contact atom on the tip's apex, we find that the resistance saturates at close contact, its value being h /2 e 2 . Our analysis of the recent experimental results of Gimzewski & Möller (1987), shows that the mechanical instability pradicted by Pethica & Sutton (1988), appears for a distance 1·5 Å larger than the close contact distance between the tip and the sample.