Under ideal conditions, the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) can create atomic resolution images of different kinds of samples. The STM can also be operated in a variety of non-vacuum environments. Because of its potentially high resolution and flexibility of operation, it is now being applied to image biological systems. Several groups have communicated the imaging of double and single stranded DNA.However, reproducibility is still the main problem with most STM results on biological samples. One source of irreproducibility is unreliable sample preparation techniques. Traditional deposition methods used in electron microscopy, such as glow discharge and spreading techniques, do not appear to work with STM. It seems that these techniques do not fix the biological sample strongly enough to the substrate surface. There is now evidence that there are strong forces between the STM tip and the sample and, unless the sample is strongly bound to the surface, it can be swept aside by the tip.
Scattering of electrically excited surface plasmon polaritons by gold nanoparticles studied by optical interferometry with a scanning tunneling microscope
