Scanning tunneling microscopy structural information

We have considered briefly the important macroscopic description of a solid adsorbent, namely, its speciflc surface area, its possible fractal nature, and if porous, its pore size distribution. In addition, it is important to know as much as possible about the microscopic structure of the surface, and contemporary surface spectroscopic and diffraction techniques, discussed in Chapter VIII, provide a good deal of such information (see also Refs. 55 and 56 for short general reviews, and the monograph by Somoijai [57]). Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFT) are now widely used to obtain the structure of surfaces and of adsorbed layers on a molecular scale (see Chapter VIII, Section XVIII-2B, and Ref. 58). On a less informative and more statistical basis are site energy distributions (Section XVII-14) there is also the somewhat laige-scale type of structure due to surface imperfections and dislocations (Section VII-4D and Fig. XVIII-14). 

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