Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

DIY Scanning-Tunneling-Microscope

Posted by chrisd on from the not-quite-a-home-project dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "Quote: To give everybody an opportunity to make his own "hands on" experience with the Nanoworld we provide all information to build up and use some of the standard equipment of this fascinating field of science, starting with the Nobel-Prize-Winner of 1986: the Scanning-Tunneling-Microscope (STM). Just follow these handy Instructions" While construction of a stm from these instructions isn't cake, it will give you a good idea of what goes into the building of such an instrument.

26 comments

  1. No one posting? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't believe no one is posting. Is the Slashdot blackout being held early?

  2. Re:Where is my penis? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah I agree. You're not *that* dumb. You're beyond dumb.

  3. How interesting by dimator · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Interesting CAD drawings... Particularly the professor's name, in the lower right...

    --
    python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
    1. Re:How interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
      Particularly the professor's name, in the lower right...

      Prof. Fuchs - which is in German means Fox. So his name is Mr. Fox. What's your point?

  4. Re:Where is my penis? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As the "build it yourself" AC who originally responded to MMMMMMMMMM... I have to protest this flame. It has no artistic value whatsoever. It is like a box of printer paper. It is dull and boring and totally obvious. Where is the wit? The irony? The poignancy? The subtle undertones that make a troll interesting and worth reading?

  5. Now THIS is News for Geeks! by pedro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Very cool, and astoundingly understandable, considering that the authors aren't native english speakers.
    It's so neat how they've adapted what, after all, are some fairly pedestrian and accessible tech to achieve such a noble goal!
    I especially enjoyed the brute-force electrochemical solution to producing a tip.
    Massively k3w1!

    --
    Brak: What's THAT?
    Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
    1. Re:Now THIS is News for Geeks! by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 2
      Actually, that's "News for Nerds" :-)

      I am way impressed with this work. At first I thought it would be something totally beyond the means of anyone outside a university physics lab, but this looks do-able at the high school level! Way cool, very impressive, can't praise it enough.

      But does it impress women?

      --
      If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
    2. Re:Now THIS is News for Geeks! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But does it impress women?

      You can use your homemade STM to make your genitalia appear larger to would-be mates.

  6. Re:fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 687 1597 2584 4181 6765 10946 17711 28657 46368 75025 121393

  7. Hey, didn't you get the message? by the_consumer · · Score: 1, Informative

    DIY science is dead, people! ;^)

    --
    "If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
    1. Re:Hey, didn't you get the message? by the_consumer · · Score: 1

      oh for god's sake, it's a joke! How could it be a troll? Nobody responded to it!

      --
      "If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
  8. Fibonacci Nazi (Fibonazi??) by ShavenYak · · Score: 0, Redundant

    ... 233 377 610 687 1597 2584 ...

    Oops. Should be ... 233 377 610 987 1597 2584 ...

    If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. If it's not worth doing, it's still no excuse for doing it wrong.

    --

    Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
    1. Re:Fibonacci Nazi (Fibonazi??) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Okay, I can see why this might have been modded down offtopic, but not redundant. If it were an ontopic post with an error and ShavenYak had corrected it, it wouldn't be redundant would it??

  9. diy not unusual in science by !splut · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'll admit that it is pretty impressive that they've got something that works with such a simple design like this, but do-it-yourself isn't really an unusual phenomenon in academia.

    When people (well, science students, grad students, and professionals, at least) think of scientific instruments, they tend to picture big complicated NMR machines, mass spec devices, HPLC systems, so on and so forth, with proprietary interface and database software, and service contracts that run tens of thousands of dollars a year.

    These big instruments are manufactured and supported by huge corporations or little startups, and either way, the manufacturer will only design and produce (and support!) these devides if there is a sizable consumer demand - something to make it economically worthwhile to try and fill the niche. But for any given technology, there was a time before that particular technology was commonplace and mass-produced.

    HPLC systems, NMR devices, CD spectrometers, X-ray crystallographic devices... (I'm a biochemist, so I apologize if my examples are skewed in that direction) these all started out as projects imposed on graduate students by research advisors in some budding new field. These first pioneering instruments, which worked well enough in many cases to generate fantastic data, had to be slapped together from off-the-shelf components and with a tight budget in mind.

    Not to detract from the oo's and aaah's, but its good to keep things in perspective.

    --
    The angel in the oatmeal.
    1. Re:diy not unusual in science by Loopster · · Score: 1

      Good point, but the difference here is one of popular appeal. There's not much popular interest in (albeit very useful) scientific equipment like HPLC or NMR systems. An X-ray diffraction pattern is too abstract for most people to appreciate.

      With the current (passe yet?) media flirtation with the chimera of nanotechnology, a project like this has more direct appeal. If you can construct from plans or a kit, or even buy for the price of a non-professional optical microscope or telescope a working STM/AFM, I think that's really something. Probe microscopes are a particularly good case for pursuing this DIY approach because they are fundamentally quite simple, and the images they create can be, on a superficial level, immediately understandable.

      -- graham

  10. its been done before by r0b0t+b0y · · Score: 1, Interesting

    i was in this dude's basketball PE class in high school.

    he wasn't that good, but local news stations brought cameras to watch him play after he won the westinghouse.

    adam cohen

    what's most incredible was that building the STM wasn't even the main point of his project. he just needed it to see what he was creating.

    --


    ----
    i do not use drugs, i AM drugs -- Dali
    1. Re:its been done before by Captn+Pepe · · Score: 2

      Yeah, Adam's a bright kid, but sadly when I met him at the '97 ISEF I got the distinct impression that all his success had made him a seriously cocky hotshot. I suppose he may have improved, but he certainly wouldn't have been easy to work with then.

      Anyway, I read the copy of his Westinghouse paper that he gave me, and frankly he won on the technical chutzpah of building a STM in his garage, not for any special insightfulness. He was just so proud of himself for making an STM-quality damping system out of Legos and bungee cords, that he didn't even realize that he'd pretty much totally failed to make his "electrochemical paintbrush" actually work. Nor do I think he understood why his idea wouldn't work for nanoscale lithography in the first place.

      What I'm trying to point out is that out in the real world, bright kids are a dime a dozen -- hell, I was one, and going to a college a lot harder than Harvard, where I was barely average, was an amazingly sobering experience -- but being bright doesn't mean squat unless you learn to take criticism, work collaboratively, and refine ideas. Even in academic research, there's little room for hotshots, and I worry that all the fawning and praise that got heaped on this kid will make him stay just that.

      That said, last I checked Adam was studying in Cambridge on a Marshall scholarship, so I suppose there's hope. Whether he learns how to work in the real world, or becomes one of the very few successful hotshots, I don't know.

      --

      Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
  11. Interesting GPL-ish licensing by iiii · · Score: 2, Informative
    I find their GPL-ish licensing (but only for "private or educational" purposes) to be pretty cool.

    From their "Licences and Legal Stuff" page:

    We grant everybody the right to construct the microscope using the here-published design for private or educational purposes. On these web pages all necessary diagrams, drawings, material descriptions and software-source-codes are published for free access. While granting the right to build the microscope we make it mandatory that new developments, improvements or other applications of our design are also made openly available for private or educational purposes.

    --
    Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
  12. Tripod piezo configurations are passe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    all the techniques discribed have been in use for over a decade. in particular,in modern STM's the tripod peizo arraingement has been almost entirely supplanted by the use of piezo tubes with quadratured electrodes.
    You stick the tip on the end of a half-inch long quarter-inch diameter tube. to swing the tip to the right you apply a contracting voltage to the right part of the tube and an expanding voltage to the left. for controlling height of the tip you either apply a voltage to the center (inside the tube) electrode or mix it onto all 4 outer electrodes.
    tubes gives you more stability, a wider scan area with lower voltages, and are easier to build.
    Now, in practice, most labs simply go out and buy a pre-built STM complete with control electronics, A/D-D/A cards, and scanning software.
    Back in my day, if you wanted an STM you had to build it from scratch! That the way it was and we liked it!

    -Dr. Luckie (experimental physicist)

    1. Re:Tripod piezo configurations are passe by Loopster · · Score: 1

      While its true that modern designs use the versatile quadrature tube configuration, the point in this project appears to be to keep things low cost and simple. Thus they use a parallel stacked piezo design that, for a given piezo material, must require lower voltage for a given displacement.

      Thus you don't need expensive, fancy and/or potentially dangerous high-voltage amplifiers, particulary important for a do-it-yourself project where high school kids might be building the system.

      -- graham

  13. Nanotech for the masses by Loopster · · Score: 1

    This is a great effort to bring the unnecssarily expensive current array of commercial probe microscopes to a price level more in line with hobbiest and lower-education-tier optical microscopes and telescopes. I know the guy (Andre Schirmeisen) running the show and we discussed this kind of thing since being in grad school together back in Montreal. Kudos to him and the Muenster team for making it reality.

    The spread of GPL-style ideas to hardware is really interesting in the sense of community fostering. A similar story was reported in Slashdot a while back for the digital oscilloscope Bitscope which seems to have captured quite a following. In a different vein, the Intel Play QX3 optical microscope, while propriety, has spawned an active mod community. It will be interesting to see if nanotech enthusiasts pick up on the Muenster SXM project in the same way. Let's hope...

    -- graham