A reproducible method to fabricate atomically sharp tips for scanning tunneling microscopy

The electrochemical etching method by Ibe et al. [J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 8, 3570 (1990)] to fabricate sharp tips for scanning tunneling microscopy was modified by shortening the cutoff time of the etching current after the material wire drops off at the air-electrolyte interface. The tip radius measured by field ion microscopy was successfully reduced to 8 nm when the cutoff time was shortened to 50 ns. The dependence of the field-emitting electron current from the sharpest tips was close to one expected from the Fowler–Nordheim formula with a reasonable value for the emitting area of the tip.