Possibility of imaging lateral profiles of individual tetrahedral hybrid orbitals in real space

The imaging mechanism of scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) and non-contact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) has the same origin, that is, the interaction between the electronic states of the tip and the electronic states of the sample. Therefore, using a well-characterized sample, the tip electronic states become the object to be probed by both STM and AFM. In this paper, we will present an analytic approach to compute the force distribution and the tunnelling-conductance distribution. As an example, we predict the possibility of resolving the lateral profiles of the tetrahedral hybrid orbitals, which are the foundation of many important materials essential to industry and life. We will discuss the conditions under which it could be observed, together with the issue of reproducibility.