Talk:Scanning tunneling spectroscopy

re: too technical tag
I agree that the page is very technical. Perhaps a sentence in the intro describing what this technology is used for; more specifically, in what branches of science is this used as a tool/what does it illuminate? Right now the only people who can understand this are people who already understand this. I've removed the wikify tag after some minimal changes, but the technical tag will remain. Nihola (talk) 19:18, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Spectroscopy?
This is a microscopy technique, not spectroscopy. "Interaction of light and matter". Needs to be renamed. 128.193.252.169 (talk) 08:11, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Facile comment. Auger electron spectroscopy, ion-scattering spectroscopy and thermal desorption spectroscopy don't have anything to do with light. Also, a spectrum is generated, not an image. The related image-generating technique should then be called nanoscopy, since an image as large as a micron is rare... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.61.240.243 (talk) 14:05, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Spectroscopy is not defined as the interaction of light and matter, but the interaction of electromagnetic radiation and matter. If we relax this to just 'radiation' we can associate any particle with its de Broglie wavelength and call it a wave. This is how the Spectroscopy page gets around this problem. It feels, and probably is, disingenuous and unnecessary to invoke de Broglie for this; dropping the word 'electromagnetic' would alone do the trick. Who do I talk to about getting the dictionary changed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.61.240.243 (talk) 15:19, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Spectroscopy?
Unfortunately, calling it spectroscopy/STS is common within the field now, so it probably wouldn't be a good idea to change its name on the Wiki page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.205.238.226 (talk) 11:31, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Tunneling current
Eqn. 5 is incomplete. This can be seen by looking at the units of the involved quantities or comparison with Eqn. 1. Left-hand side (current I) is usually given in A=C/s, the right-hand side is in 1/J (rho is in 1/J, integration variable is in J, T is a probability (unit 1)). While this is cited correctly (the equation is exactly like that in the given reference), it is still incomplete. -- Pjpeters (talk) 09:57, 10 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Equation 5 says I is proportional to the integral. Equation 1 says I is equal to .... Physicist like to do this when they know their models are too simple to predict the exact values. But equations like eq 5 help us see what parameters the current depends on. I am removing the "Disputed section|date=November 2016" template. Ponor (talk) 10:04, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Brain Damage
This is not very easy to understand for the average internet person.

There are too many symbols and techno-mumbo-jumbos. How do you expect me to understand this?

How do we even know this is real? I find it highly suspect that you don't even have a single picture taken by or even of your microscope.

Most importantly, my brain shuts down when I see a wall of the maths. The equation to build your microscope covers most of the screen when I hold the iPhone® hamburger-style. You need to add a Trigger Warning. By the time I realized I was not gazing into a picture of writing on the wall of some foreign country, the maths gazed me right back. I am certain you gave me brain damage, for I have lost my innate aversion to what I now know to be the maths, despite and in spite of their paucity of numeral glyphs.

Thank you for your microscope, and I mean that most passive-aggressively. I am will meet you soon to tag you as follows WP2:TECHNICAL

P.Ssst: PoV: u up? send scope pic rn
 * eop

That stands for end of point of view. Since you are older than me and I'm not a psychopath, I gave you the necessary background knowledge to understand what I am saying to you. Try extending the same courtesy so that I can finish building your microscope.

Now you know how it feels. Next time, think of the children💘 76.188.120.7 (talk) 12:05, 31 January 2023 (UTC)


 * My opinion is that this comment adds nothing productive to the conversation about this subject. Technical subjects are technical, we know. There are many pages that can be linked such that a viewer can build an understanding. Not every page needs to be pedagogical to someone whose mind blanks when they see an equation. 104.39.159.215 (talk) 20:49, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

"STM and STS only sample valence states"
The sentence in the limitations section: "Since the tip-sample bias range in tunneling experiments is limited to [Phi/e], where is the apparent barrier height, STM and STS  only sample valence electron states" needs evidence for this claim. As stated it appears wrong. If at zero bias we are in the gap between valence and conduction bands, and the tip is grounded, and a voltage is applied on the sample, how does the barrier height stop us from reaching the conduction states? The limited instance in which this is clearly true is if the energy distance to the conduction band is greater than Phi/e.

Also, many papers show exactly the opposite. For evidence, take this reference: https://www.cmu.edu/physics/stm/publ/86/QuanSTS.pdf. Look at Fig. 4, the dashed line indicates the onset of conduction states. 104.39.159.215 (talk) 20:44, 10 February 2023 (UTC)