Development of liquid-metal-ion source low-energy ion gun/high-temperature ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscope combined system

A liquid-metal-ion source low-energy ion gun/high-temperature ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscope combined system (LMIS-IG/STM) has been developed in order to investigate the ion beam modification process in situ based on our previous ion gun/STM combined system (IG/STM). Various kinds of metal ions can be irradiated with low acceleration energy of 0.01–5keV during STM observation at 400–600°C. As an example, real-time STM observation of Si(111)7×7 surface irradiated with Si2+ ions is demonstrated. The STM results have shown that the surface defects generated by Si2+ ion irradiation exhibit similar behavior of surface defects induced by Ar+ irradiation with IG/STM.