An add-on unit was developed that allows the cleaning of scanning tunneling microscope tips by electron beam annealing even if they cannot be disconnected from the piezo scanner in situ. The whole scanner tip combination, which is attached to a linear motion stage, is subjected to a pulsed annealing treatment. The heat impact is focused on the outermost tip by sticking the tip through a hole in a grounded Mo screening plate with the cathode mounted on the apposite side. Tungsten tips attached to the scanner of the Omicron ultrahigh vacuum Multiscan Lab were annealed to achieve atomic resolution of ultrahigh vacuum cleaved GaAs (110) faces. A highly doped superlattice package grown on semi-insulating GaAs was also able to be investigated on the cleaved (110) face due to the ability of exact tip positioning with a scanning electron microscope. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.
