A MEMS electrostatic resonator for a fast-scan STM system

In this work, we report the development of a MEMS electrostatic resonator used as the actuator for a fast-scan STM system (FS-STM). The FS-STM requires an actuator which can oscillate with a relatively large amplitude (>3 μm) at a resonant frequency of larger than 10 kHz, which cannot be achieved by using piezoelectric actuators. Under ambient pressure, the measurement results show that the oscillating amplitude of the proposed electrostatic actuator is about 3.1 μm at 11.8 kHz. This resonator will be used to generate the scanning motion of the tip in lateral direction, which might significantly improve the scanning rate of a typical radio-frequency STM.