Consequences of the stick-slip movement for the scanning force microscopy imaging of graphite

Abstract

An experimental and theoretical study on the nature of the movement of a scanned tip on a graphite (0001) surface is presented. By comparison between theory and experiment, it is demonstrated that the lateral forces occurring during scanning are strongly affected by the so-called “stick-slip” movement of the tip. The experimentally observed force maps are identified to represent “hollow-site resolution” instead of “atomic resolution.” In particular, it will be shown that the often reported “resolution of every other atom” can be explained straightforwardly by the two-dimensional stick-slip movement of the tip.