Force-noise spectroscopy by tunneling current deflection sensing

An electro-mechanical setup for the measurement of force-noise properties in a low-temperature tunneling microscope has been utilized to enable extremely high resolution and acquire force-noise spectra as function of the applied voltage bias. The direct crosstalk of vibrations onto the tunneling current is used to measure the deflection of a force-sensing cantilever. We demonstrate its capability to measure the mechanical energy of the cantilever, caused by the noise of the force from vacuum tunneling between polycrystalline Iridium electrodes. We observe peak levels of the induced cantilever energy at polarity-symmetric voltages corresponding to dominant peaks of the phonon density of states, which suggests that inelastic transport processes contribute to force fluctuations. (C) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.