HIGH-RESOLUTION POTENTIOMETRY OF PLANAR ELECTROFORMED MIM STRUCTURES

Many attempts have been made to detect the current carrying filaments in electroformed metal insulator metal (MIM) structures (Pagnia and Sotnik 1988, Pagnia 1990). Transmission and scanning electron microscopes have been used without real success. Even experiments with the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) could not definitely detect the filaments. We have mapped the potential distribution on an electroformed planar MIM diode (gold on quartz glass) with an STM and found usually only one (sometimes a few) sharp potential drop(s) in the microslit.