The STM is a revolutionary experimental surface probe that has provided direct local insight into the surface electronic structure. Sometimes the interpretation of STM topographs are not straightforward and therefore theoretically modeled STM images may resolve conflicting possibilities and point to an underlying atomistic model. ASE includes python modules for generating Tersoff-Hamann STM topographs.
See also
More details:
Scanning tunneling microscope.
List of integers 0, 1, and/or 2 indicating which surface symmetries have been used to reduce the number of k-points for the DFT calculation. The three integers correspond to the following three symmetry operations:
[-1 0] [ 1 0] [ 0 1]
[ 0 1] [ 0 -1] [ 1 0]
Calculate avarage current at height z.
Use this to get an idea of what current to use when scanning.
Constant current line scan.
Example:
stm = STM(...)
z = ... # tip position
c = stm.get_averaged_current(-1.0, z)
stm.linescan(-1.0, c, (1.2, 0.0), (1.2, 3.0))
Constant current 2-d scan.
Returns three 2-d arrays (x, y, z) containing x-coordinates, y-coordinates and heights. These three arrays can be passed to matplotlibs contourf() function like this:
>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
>>> plt.gca(aspect='equal')
>>> plt.contourf(x, y, z)
>>> plt.show()