Controlled Atom by Atom Restructuring of a Metal Surface with the Scanning Tunneling Microscope

Abstract

We report the ability to completely restructure a metal surface by precision manipulation of individual atoms with the scanning tunneling microscope: Besides extracting atoms from kink sites on Cu(211) we are now also able to ``dig out'' atoms from the even more strongly bound intrinsic step sites and thus to create adatom-vacancy pairs. Together with the processes of moving adatoms along and across intrinsic step edges and the possibility of healing out adatom-vacancy pairs, we have a complete set of lateral manipulation processes at hand. The reliability of all these processes opens up exciting ``engineering'' possibilities for structuring of extended surface areas.