A compact ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscope with dilution refrigeration

TL;DR

This paper presents a compact ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscope with dilution refrigeration, enabling millikelvin temperature operation in a small, low-noise setup suitable for standard laboratory environments.

Contribution

The authors designed and built a compact, low-noise STM with integrated dilution refrigerator capable of millikelvin operation in UHV within a standard lab space.

Findings

Achieved base temperature of 25 mK in UHV conditions.

Maintained mechanical vibrations below 300 fm/√Hz with dilution circulation.

Electronic temperature reduced below 100 mK through filtering.

Abstract

We have designed and built a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) setup for operation at millikelvin temperatures in ultra high vacuum. A compact cryostat with an integrated dilution refrigerator has been built, that allows measurements at a base temperature of 25 mK in magnetic field up to 7.5 T with low mechanical and electronic noise. The cryostat is not larger than conventional helium bath cryostats (23 and 13 liters of nitrogen and helium respectively), so that the setup does not require a large experimental hall and fits easily into a standard lab space. Mechanical vibrations with running dilution circulation were kept below 300 fm/$\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ by mechanically decoupling the STM from the cryostat and the pumping system. All electronic input lines were low-pass filtered, reducing the electronic temperature to below 100 mK, as deduced from the quasiparticle peaks of superconducting aluminium. The microscope is optically accessible in the parked position, making sample and tip exchange fast and user-friendly. For measurement the STM is lowered 60 mm down so that the sample ends in the middle of a wet superconducting magnetic coil.