what did the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope allow scientists to do for the first time
A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level.Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer (at IBM Zuerich), zÃ¼rich The Nobel prize In physics in. 1986he resolution of an image is limited by the radius of curvature of the scanning tip of the STM. Additionally, image artifacts can occur if the tip has two tips at the end rather than a single atom; this leads to âdouble-tip imaging,â a situation in which both tips contribute to the tunneling.