Characterization and local modification of atomically flat gold surfaces by STM

SUMMARY In order to characterize the surface of epitaxial gold on mica in air we have used a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) to image and to modify this surface. It was possible to create controlled features by applying voltage pulses on the tip while scanning. The voltage threshold for writing (about 3 V, 100 ns pulses) was dependent of the tip condition. The lowest pulses were associated with sub‐50 Å feature size. We observed that at ambient temperature the written features disappeared in a time scale of half an hour for the smallest (<30 Å) to a few hours for the bigger features (∼500 Å). We have used the same surface as a substrate for organic imaging. We also present images of a polymer deposited on gold.