scanning tunneling microscope

American  

noun

1. a device that uses a moving needle and the tunnel effect to generate a maplike image of the atomic surface structure of matter, thereby achieving even greater magnification than the scanning electron microscope.

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scanning tunneling microscope Scientific  

1. A microscope used to make images of individual atoms on the surface of a metal. The microscope has a probe with a small voltage applied to it ending in a tiny sharp tip (ideally consisting of one atom) that is moved close the material's surface. Quantum tunneling of electrons between tip and the metal provides a small current, and that current is held constant by varying the distance between the tip and the material's surface atoms. As the probe is moved across the surface, a three-dimension image of the surface is formed, based on the continual adjustments made to the height of the tip to keep the electron flow constant.

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Example Sentences

These achievements were made using a scanning tunneling microscope probe at low temperatures.

From Science Daily • Feb. 6, 2024

Today we can see atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope but our models still contain unseen objects such as quarks.

From Scientific American • May 8, 2015

Dr. Rohrer and his colleague Gerd Binnig introduced the device, the scanning tunneling microscope, or STM, at an I.B.M. laboratory in Zurich in 1981, after decades of explosive growth in microscopy.

From New York Times • May 22, 2013

IBM has been playing around with individual atoms for a long time: two of its Zurich-based researchers invented the scanning tunneling microscope in 1981 and won the Nobel Prize in Physics for it in 1986.

From Time • May 1, 2013

The scanning tunneling microscope, invented by Binnig and Rohrer, records the position of a needle that rises and dips to keep constant height while moving across the tiny irregularities on the surface of a specimen.

From Time Magazine Archive