Theory and Application for the Scanning Tunneling Microscope

Abstract

A theory is presented for vacuum tunneling between a real solid surface and a model probe with a locally spherical tip, applicable to the recently developed "scanning tunneling microscope." Calculations for 2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1 and 3\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1 reconstructions of Au(110) are in excellent agreement with recent experimental results, if an effective radius of curvature of 9 \AA{} is assumed for the tip.