We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Real-space Wigner-Seitz Cells Imaging of Potassium on Graphite via Elastic Atomic Manipulation.
- Authors
Yin, Feng; Koskinen, Pekka; Kulju, Sampo; Akola, Jaakko; Palmer, Richard E.
- Abstract
Atomic manipulation in the scanning tunnelling microscopy, conventionally a tool to build nanostructures one atom at a time, is here employed to enable the atomic-scale imaging of a model low-dimensional system. Specifically, we use low-temperature STM to investigate an ultra thin film (4 atomic layers) of potassium created by epitaxial growth on a graphite substrate. The STM images display an unexpected honeycomb feature, which corresponds to a real-space visualization of the Wigner-Seitz cells of the close-packed surface K atoms. Density functional simulations indicate that this behaviour arises from the elastic, tip-induced vertical manipulation of potassium atoms during imaging, i.e. elastic atomic manipulation, and reflects the ultrasoft properties of the surface under strain. The method may be generally applicable to other soft e.g. molecular or biomolecular systems.
- Subjects
CELL imaging; SCANNING tunneling microscopy; THIN films; NANOSTRUCTURED materials; WIGNER distribution
- Publication
Scientific Reports, 2015, p8276
- ISSN
2045-2322
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/srep08276