STM-induced light emission from vacuum-evaporated gold film

A vacuum evaporation system has been used to evaporate gold film on glass substrate in order to probe the scanning tunneling microscope-light emission (STM-LE) from the evaporated film. The surface morphology of the evaporated Au film has been checked by atomic force microscope (AFM). In order to estimate the appropriate thickness of the Au film, which is essential for the enhancement of STM-LE in the prism-coupled geometry, a theoretical calculation has been performed. Our theoretical simulation revealed that the light emission from the prism-coupled STM junction is strongly enhanced when the Au film has a thickness of 40 nm. AFM observation also showed that the morphology of the gold films strongly depends on the cleanliness of glass substrates and the deposition temperature. Relatively smooth surface was observed when a 40-nm-thick Au film was evaporated at room temperature on the preannealed glass substrate. Finally, the evaporated films were deposited on the flat bottom of a hemispherical glass prism, and STM-LE from the tip–sample gap into the vacuum (tip-side emission) and into the prism (prism-side emission) were measured. It was found from the experimental results that the prism-side emission is much stronger than the tip-side emission by virtue of the enhancement of the prism-coupled geometry.