Methodological problems of the applicability of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) for the characterization of poorly conductive diamond and diamond-like carbon films are discussed. The sensitivity of STM to the variation of the surface relief is characterized by a decay length d. It is shown that d depends on the serial resistance Rf of the sample seen by a tunneling microscope. For Rf ≦ 10 MΩ, d is less than 1 nm that enables to image the samples with reasonable quality and correct reproduction of surface corrugations. The standard tunneling spectroscopies I(z) and I(U) prove that the samples are scanned in a transition regime between true tunneling and electric contact of the tip with the surface layer. For some diamond films a semiconductor-type behavior of I(U) curves is recorded.
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Gorbunov et al. (1994) studied this question.
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