A scanning tunneling microscopy based potentiometry technique for the measurements of the local surface electric potential is presented and illustrated by experiments performed on current-carrying thin tungsten films. The obtained results demonstrate a sub-millivolt resolution in the measured surface potential. The application of this potentiometry technique to the local sensing of the spin Hall effect is outlined and some experimental results are reported.
@article{arxiv.1706.07882,
title = {A scanning tunneling microscopy based potentiometry technique and its application to the local sensing of the spin Hall effect},
author = {Ting Xie and Michael Dreyer and David Bowen and Dan Hinkel and R. E. Butera and Charles Krafft and Isaak Mayergoyz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.07882},
year = {2017}
}