A facility for nanoscience research: An overview

We describe the development of an experimental system, consisting of a low temperature scanning tunneling microscope coupled to UHV tip and sample preparation chambers, with the goal of providing new measurement capabilities for the study of quantum and spin electronic systems on the nanometer scale. The physical information desired in such systems includes: the quantized electron energy distributions arising from spatial or magnetic confinement, the spatial extent of electronic wavefunctions, the role of electron-electron interactions in the presence of confining boundaries, the exact physical structure of the system, the shape of the confining potentials, and finally, the physics of electron transport on nanometer length scales. Additionally, we have incorporated a computer controlled facility for automated atom assembly to perform "bottom-up" fabrication of nanostructures. Some initial results will be discussed.