Consequences of the stick-slip movement for the scanning force microscopy imaging of graphite

An experimental and theoretical study on the nature of the movement of a scanned tip on a graphite (0001) surface is presented. By comparison between theory and experiment, it is demonstrated that the lateral forces occurring during scanning are strongly affected by the so-called ``stick-slip'' movement of the tip. The experimentally observed force maps are identified to represent ``hollow-site resolution'' instead of ``atomic resolution.'' In particular, it will be shown that the often reported ``resolution of every other atom'' can be explained straightforwardly by the two-dimensional stick-slip movement of the tip.