RECENT ADVANCES IN ULTRAFAST TIME-RESOLVED SCANNING TUNNELING MICROSCOPY

Ye Tian, Fan Yang, Chaoyu Guo and Ying Jiang
Additional contact information
Ye Tian: International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China
Fan Yang: International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China
Chaoyu Guo: International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China
Ying Jiang: International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China†Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100871, P. R. China‡CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P. R. China

Surface Review and Letters (SRL), 2018, vol. 25, issue Supp01, 1-19

Abstract: Making smaller and faster functional devices has led to an increasing demand for a microscopic technique that allows the investigation of carrier and phonon dynamics with both high spatial and temporal resolutions. Traditional optical pump–probe methods can achieve femtosecond temporal resolution but fall short in the spatial resolution due to the diffraction limit. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), on the contrary, has realized atomic-scale spatial resolution relying on the high sensitivity of the tunneling current to the tip-sample distance. However, limited by the electronics bandwidth, STM can only push the temporal resolution to the microseconds scale, restricting its applications to probe various ultrafast dynamic processes. The combination of these two methods takes advantages of optical pump–probe techniques and highly localized tunneling currents of STM, providing one viable solution to track atomic-scale ultrafast dynamics in single molecules and low-dimensional materials. In this review, we will focus on several ultrafast time-resolved STM methods by coupling the tunneling junctions with pulsed electric waves, THz, near-infrared and visible laser. Their applications to probe the carrier dynamics, spin dynamics, and molecular motion will be highlighted. In the end, we will present an outlook on the challenges and new opportunities in this field.

Keywords: Scanning tunneling microscopy; pump-probe technique; femtosecond laser; terahertz technique; ultrafast dynamics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0218625X18410032
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:srlxxx:v:25:y:2018:i:supp01:n:s0218625x18410032

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0218625X18410032

Access Statistics for this article

Surface Review and Letters (SRL) is currently edited by S Y Tong

More articles in Surface Review and Letters (SRL) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().