A COMPACT SCANNING TUNNELING MICROSCOPY CONTROL AND DATA ACQUISITION-SYSTEM BASED ON A MACINTOSH-II WORKSTATION

A compact system based on a Macintosh II workstation for scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) control, data acquisition, and image display and processing is presented. To access the versatile analog electronics and the piezo scanner of our STM, a multifunction board (MacAdios II) is employed as an interface. The on-board timer/counter permits well defined time intervals between each tip movement and subsequent data acquisition. For on-line control and image display of scanning processes an efficient code was written in Pascal and C. To achieve simple and user-friendly operation, the program takes advantage of so-called mouse-window-desktop techniques supported by the Macintosh operating system. The entire code has a modular structure and therefore facilitates easy replacement of existing modules or implementation of additional ones. © 1990, American Vacuum Society. All rights reserved.