The STM is housed in a dedicated UHV chamber pumped by a 400l/s ion pump. It is attached to the MBE growth system by a series of UHV transfer tubes, thereby allowing the transfer of samples with mimimal surface contamination. Great care has been taken to vibrationally isolate this chamber from the rest of the system.

The 2 inch wafer holders from the growth system are transferred into the STM chamber by a cassetrac. The samples are loaded into the STM, which hangs from the top of the chamber and is itself vibrationally isolated. The STM, control electronics and software was supplied by East Coast Scientific of Cambridge.

This system has achieved lateral atomic resolution, it is routinely used to observe dimer rows. It has been used for several projects, including the observation of the surface structure of MBE grown GaSb as a function of growth temperature and the analysis of surface defects created by 40kV Ga ion implantation into GaAs.

This system is now being used for the fabrication of nanoscale semiconductor structures in combination with the in situ ion beam lithography and surface etching systems.