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Forces between a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) tip and graphite surface are studied in air by use of a cantilever beam as the conducting tip holder and another tunnel tip as a detector for the deflection of the beam. The results show that the STM tip usually operates under the strong repulsive force. The measured force changes according to the topographic corrugations in the standard topographic mode: however, the change is not observed in the current-imaging mode.
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Yamada et al. (1988) studied this question.
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