Abstract
We describe an experiment based around a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) designed for an advanced undergraduate teaching laboratory. The STM is used to study the kinetics of graphite oxidation by monitoring the density of oxidation pits that form on the surface of a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) sample which has been heated to 750 - 800 °C. Our experiment takes the STM beyond its traditional `look-see' teaching role by exploiting the technique for the acquisition of semi-quantitative data. The students are required to calibrate the instrument, determine the optimum oxidation conditions experimentally and calculate the pit nucleation activation energy for planar graphite. They then determine the distribution of pit diameters as a function of oxidation time and explain their findings. We show typical results and describe the experimental arrangement.
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