Scanning Voltage Microscopy for Emerging Electronic and Photonic Devices: Integrating nanotips with a single atom end for SVM

Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques have been developed and deployed to delineate the internal characteristics of electronic and photonic devices such as doping profiles, electric potential profile, electric field profile, and charge carrier profile, as they play a crucial role in the function and performance of biased and unbiased devices. Two of the most promising techniques, scanning spreading resistance microscopy (SSRM) and scanning capacitance microscopy (SCM), are now commercially available for two-dimensional (2-D) dopant profiling by the microelectronic and optoelectronic industries, but the techniques delineate only devices at equilibrium. Therefore, to directly observe the internal behavior of operating quantum optoelectronic devices, a new SPM technique, scanning voltage microscopy (SVM), has been developed.