Controlled Atom by Atom Restructuring of a Metal Surface with the Scanning Tunneling Microscope

We report the ability to completely restructure a metal surface by precision manipulation of individual atoms with the scanning tunneling microscope: Besides extracting atoms from kink sites on Cu(211) we are now also able to “dig out” atoms from the even more strongly bound intrinsic step sites and thus to create adatom-vacancy pairs. Together with the processes of moving adatoms along and across intrinsic step edges and the possibility of healing out adatom-vacancy pairs, we have a complete set of lateral manipulation processes at hand. The reliability of all these processes opens up exciting “engineering” possibilities for structuring of extended surface areas.