UHV Compatible Negative Stiffness Vibrational Isolator for STM

A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) images electronic structure at the picometer scale; it is thus extremely sensitive to even small ambient and environmental vibrations. Here we describe an ultra-high vacuum (UHV) compatible vibration isolation stage for the STM that uses a negative stiffness mechanism (NSM). NSM isolators have demonstrated lower resonant frequencies than pneumatic and eddy current vibration isolation, but they have not been available for compact in-vacuum use commercially. We used COSMOL Multiphysics finite-element analysis to simulate structural stability and natural frequency of our new design. We used a vibrometer and accelerometer to demonstrate the new system performance. Here we present and compare our simulation and measurement results.