Temperature calibration for diffusion experiments to sub-Kelvin precision.

Abstract

Arrhenius plots are often used to determine energy barriers and prefactors of thermally activated processes. The precision of thus determined values depends crucially on the precision of the temperature measurement at the sample surface. We line out a procedure to determine the absolute temperature of a metal sample in a cryogenic scanning tunneling microscope between 5 K and 50 K with sub-Kelvin precision. We demonstrate the dependence of prefactor and diffusion energy on this calibration for diffusion of CO on Cu(111) and on Ag(100) measured in the temperature range from 30 K to 38 K and 19 K to 23 K, respectively.