Real-space Wigner-Seitz Cells Imaging of Potassium on Graphite via Elastic Atomic Manipulation

Thumbnail Image

Access rights

openAccess
publishedVersion

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

Date

2015-02-05

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

Series

Scientific Reports, Volume 5, pp. 1-5

Abstract

Atomic manipulation in the scanning tunnelling microscopy, conventionally a tool to build nanostructures one atom at a time, is here employed to enable the atomic-scale imaging of a model low-dimensional system. Specifically, we use low-temperature STM to investigate an ultra thin film (4 atomic layers) of potassium created by epitaxial growth on a graphite substrate. The STM images display an unexpected honeycomb feature, which corresponds to a real-space visualization of the Wigner-Seitz cells of the close-packed surface K atoms. Density functional simulations indicate that this behaviour arises from the elastic, tip-induced vertical manipulation of potassium atoms during imaging, i.e. elastic atomic manipulation, and reflects the ultrasoft properties of the surface under strain. The method may be generally applicable to other soft e.g. molecular or biomolecular systems.

Description

Keywords

Other note

Citation

Yin, F, Koskinen, P, Kulju, S, Akola, J & Palmer, R E 2015, ' Real-space Wigner-Seitz Cells Imaging of Potassium on Graphite via Elastic Atomic Manipulation ', Scientific Reports, vol. 5, 8276, pp. 1-5 . https://doi.org/10.1038/srep08276