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The open-source scanning tunneling microscope

Catwell

V0.1 of the ChemHackerSTM
 
 
To award a "flash of micro-brilliance," The Awesome Foundation's Chicago chapter has just awarded a micro-grant to Sacha De'Angeli, their October winner, for his open source Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM). The $1,000 dollar, no-strings-attached grant will be the catalyst De'Angeli needed to push his project to completion, right when he needed it most.
I met Sacha De'Angeli a few years ago when he told me he had the desire to build a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) on the cheap. While riffling through drawers of electrical components at the Chicago hackerspace Pumping Station One, he told me about why he wanted to build the device. "Tunneling microscopes are far too expensive for the average person to use, somewhere between 25-100 thousand dollars. I want mine to be a few thousand." He later set the bar at only $1,000 dollars, within the grasp of most people.
I asked where he is getting the components to build such a complicated device. De'Angeli said, "Here and there. Mostly surplus parts. It will probably be a slow build." Thanks to the grant, the build might not be too long in the making. De'Angeli has also left his former day job to focus on his work with the STM. The award is a telltale sign he is on the right track.
A STM is a non-optical, high-resolution, microscopy technique that is often used to obtain images of a conductive surface at the atomic scale. A sharp metal tip is placed only a few nano-meters from surface, a current is applied between the two (Tunneling Current). The amount of current produced is exponentially dependent on the distance between the tip and the surface. Scanned points relative to the Z-position of the tunneling tip will produce a topographical image of the sample surface. If the resolution is high enough, the resulting image will show individual atoms.
To award a "flash of micro-brilliance," The Awesome Foundation's Chicago chapter has just awarded a micro-grant to Sacha De'Angeli, their October winner, for his open source Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM). The $1,000 dollar, no-strings-attached grant will be the catalyst De'Angeli needed to push his project to completion, right when he needed it most. 

I met Sacha De'Angeli a few years ago when he told me he had the desire to build a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) on the cheap. While riffling through drawers of electrical components at the Chicago hackerspace Pumping Station One, he told me about why he wanted to build the device. "Tunneling microscopes are far too expensive for the average person to use, somewhere between 25-100 thousand dollars. I want mine to be a few thousand." He later set the bar at only $1,000 dollars, within the grasp of most people.

I asked where he is getting the components to build such a complicated device. De'Angeli said, "Here and there. Mostly surplus parts. It will probably be a slow build." Thanks to the grant, the build might not be too long in the making. De'Angeli has also left his former day job to focus on his work with the STM. The award is a telltale sign he is on the right track. 

A STM is a non-optical, high-resolution, microscopy technique that is often used to obtain images of a conductive surface at the atomic scale. A sharp metal tip is placed only a few nano-meters from surface, a current is applied between the two (Tunneling Current). The amount of current produced is exponentially dependent on the distance between the tip and the surface. Scanned points relative to the Z-position of the tunneling tip will produce a topographical image of the sample surface. If the resolution is high enough, the resulting image will show individual atoms.

 
Luckily, De'Angeli is going open-source on the project, supplying both the hardware and software design available to everyone. The project is sure to change Scanning Tunneling Microscope usage and technology industry. If you want to help him along with the project too, visit his website's store. There you can find other projects he made; Rugged Colognes (I may get the Gearhead scent), circuit board guitar picks, and a color coded periodic table.

 
Cabe
 
- Sacha De'Angeli was the president of the Pumping Station One hacker space.
- See his main project page at Chemhacker.com
- See another device from De'Angeli in element14's lighting group. "Build a transmissiometer" on the left side videos.
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