Simple micrometer driven coarse motion stage with lateral kinematic mount for scanning probe microscopy

We have designed a simple micrometer driven coarse motion stage for scanning probe microscopy. It was tested with a tube scanner based scanning tunneling microscope (STM) of the Lægsgaard/Besenbacher type. A lateral kinematic mount is used for sample positioning. The reproducibility of sample positioning is in principle only limited by the quality of the micrometers. Our design involves exchangeable sample mounts which may be adapted to the users’ requirements. The stage does not cause deterioration in the resonance behavior of the STM and preserves the capability to obtain atomic resolution on graphite.