Challenges and errors: interpreting high resolution images in scanning tunneling microscopy

With the availability of first principles methods to simulate the operation of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) theory has moved from the qualitative and topographic to the quantitative and dynamic. Simulations in effect predict the influence of a model-tip or chemical interactions between tip and sample in the actual imaging process. By comparing experiments and simulations, the information about the analyzed system can be substantially extended. We give an overview of recent work, where the combination of first principles simulations with high resolution measurements was decisive to arrive at consistent results. This concerns the resolution of single wavefunctions by STM, force effects in high resolution scans, contrast reversal due to the field of the tip, the imaging of magnetic properties by spin-polarized STM, and the analysis of dynamic processes on surfaces. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.