Room-temperature tunnel current amplifier and experimental setup for high resolution electronic spectroscopy in millikelvin STM experiments

Abstract

The spectroscopic resolution of tunneling measurements performed with a scanning tunneling microscope is ultimately limited by the temperature at which the experiment is performed. To take advantage of the potential high spectroscopic resolution associated with operating an STM in a dilution refrigerator we have designed a room temperature tunnel current amplifier having very small back-action on the tunnel contact and allowing to nearly reach the predicted energy resolution. This design is a modification of the standard op-amp based tip-biasing current-voltage converter which implements differential voltage sensing and whose back action on the tip voltage is only ~2 $\mu$V rms for a 14 MV/A transimpedance and 22 kHz bandwidth.