Control circuit for a scanning tunneling microscope

Abstract

We have successfully built and tested a circuit designed to control a piezoelectric tube scanner having the standard single inner-electrode quartered outer-electrode configuration, using digital-to-analog (D/A) converters commercially available. To avoid noise associated with the PC, the signals transmitted by the D/A channels to the control electronics are received by instrumentation amplifiers INA 105 at the control circuit, providing 86 dB common mode rejection, thereby over four orders of magnitude of immunity to common mode noise. To prevent ground loops in the communication between the control electronics and the analog-to-digital (A/D) converters, a novel approach was used. The signals sent by the control electronics to the A/D converters were transmitted via isolation amplifiers ISO 122 followed by a 10 kHz Sallen–Key low pass filter incorporated at each output of the control circuit, providing galvanic isolation between the control electronics and the PC, thereby eliminating ground loops. The control circuit was designed to allow analog as well as digital feedback, selectable via a toggle switch. The design also incorporates the possibility of using two independent external signals to modulate the polarization of the sample and two independent external signals to modulate the piezoelectric transducer drive along the Z direction. It also incorporates the possibility of electronically canceling the slope that might occur while scanning due to the sample being tilted along the X axis (fast scan direction) and/or along the Y axis (slow scan direction). The circuit was tested using two 12 bit A/D–D/A converters DAS 1602 to control the scanner of a scanning tunneling microscope, with a home-built scanning head, electrometer, and preamplifier. With the complete system in operation but in the absence of tunneling current, the electrometer exhibits a current noise under 3 pA rms and a response time of 30 μs to a step input current, a performance that compares well with that of bulkier and more expensive commercial low noise current amplifiers. To calibrate the instrument and verify proper control operation, we obtained images of a commercial holographic grating covered with gold running the instrument in the digital feedback mode, using the algorithm described by Piner and Reifenberger [Rev. Sci. Instrum. 60, 3123 (1989)]. The control circuit and the electrometer turn out to be about one order of magnitude less expensive than commercially available control circuits and low noise current amplifiers of similar performance.