We use scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and core and valence photoemission as well as low-energy electron diffraction to characterize recently discovered S/Cu(111) surface structures that appear at low coverage below ordering temperatures of around 230 K. At even lower coverage ordered local arrangements are observed near steps and dislocations. Of the laterally extending structures one is open. and honeycomb (hc) like, while three other structures (I,II,III) are more complicated. It is suggested that the structures can be explained as reordered (0001) planes of CuS. Surprisingly the open hc structure gives room for the Cu(111) surface state according to photoemission and scanning tunneling spectra. Core level spectra provide support for one of the models proposed for an earlier studied room-temperature structure [Cu(111)-( root 7x root7)R+/-19.1 degrees -S].

A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) with a compact, three-dimensional, inertial slider design is presented. Inertial sliding of the STM tip, in three dimensions, enables coarse motion and scanning using only one piezoelectric tube. Using the same electronics both for scanning and inertial sliding, step lengths of less than 5% of the piezo range were achieved. The compact design, less than 1 cm3 in volume, ensures a low mechanical noise level and enables us to fit the STM into the sample holder of a transmission electron microscope (TEM), while maintaining atomic scale resolution in both STM and TEM imaging. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.

The paper describes the use of an in-situ microscopy technique, which combines transmission electron microscopy (TEM) with scanning probe microscopy (SPM), to investigate the electrical and mechanical properties of individual silicon and germanium nanowires. Additionally, the formation of ordered arrays of size-monodisperse silicon and germanium nanowires within mesoporous silica powders and thin films using a supercritical fluid inclusion phase technique is described. In particular, we demonstrate ultra high-density arrays of germanium nanowires, up to 2 x 10(12) wires per square centimetre. These matric embedded nano-composite materials display unique optical properties such as intense room temperature ultraviolet and visible photoluminescence.

Nanoscale gold contacts were investigated both experimentally and theoretically. Simulations of in situ processes in a new combined TEM-AFM microscope were performed by molecular dynamics and theoretical mechanics methods. Atomistic transformations of gold nanometer-sized wires (nanowires) between Au-probe and Au-surface were studied in processes both of loading-unloading and in the normal, lateral, diagonal and zigzag directions of the probe motion. Molecular dynamics was used for studies of "adhesion avalanche", shear and strain deformations. Theoretical mechanics was used for studies of jump-to-contact and jump-off-contact phenomena. Reorientations from (100) to (111) planes with formation of extended zigzag, vacancy cavities, a double-neck creation and a slip along the (110) plane with formation of twins and steps were observed. Deformation mechanisms were shown to depend on schemes of motions and on the ratio between the relative velocity of the probe and surface motion and the velocity of the defect relaxation.