Thirty per cent contrast in secondary-electron imaging by scanning field-emission microscopy

We perform scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) in a regime where primary electrons are field-emitted from the tip and excite secondary electrons out of the target—the scanning field-emission microscopy regime (SFM). In the SFM mode, a secondary-electron contrast as high as 30% is observed when imaging a monoatomic step between a clean W(110)- and an Fe-covered W(110)-terrace. This is a figure of contrast comparable to STM. The apparent width of the monoatomic step attains the 1 nm mark, i.e. it is only marginally worse than the corresponding width observed in STM. The origin of the unexpected strong contrast in SFM is the material dependence of the secondary-electron yield and not the dependence of the transported current on the tip–target distance, typical of STM: accordingly, we expect that a technology combining STM and SFM will highlight complementary aspects of a surface while simultaneously making electrons, selected with nanometre spatial precision, available to a macroscopic environment for further processing.