Quantum Technology Applied to Alpha-C:H Film Modeling Aspects

The possibility of atomic-level manipulation on solid surfaces in the field of the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) was first demonstrated by Becker et al. in 1987 [ 1 ] as a formation of nanosize protuberances on the Ge (111) surface. In the followingyears, the fundamental investigations of the atomic-manipulation processes have dealt mainly with pure surfaces of some solids, such as gold, silver, and platinum, tungsten and molybdenum chalcogenides. Silicon surfaces in ultrahigh vacuum were studied most thoroughly (see References [ 2 , 3 ] and references therein). At the same time, a wish to simplify the technological conditions made it necessary to search for a possibility of performing atomic manipulation on a surface in gaseous or liquid media. This lead to papers demonstrating the first successful attempts to produce single nanosize growths on the surface of highly oriented pyro-lytic graphite from liquid [ 4 ] and gas [ 5-7 ] media. It was shown that in all cases the growths are formed in the tunnelling gap when the voltage on the STM tip reaches a threshold value in the range of 3.5-4.5 V (depending on the system). However, the formation mechanism itself and the atomic composition of the structures formed have not been determined.