Extraction of interaction energies from scanning-tunneling- and field-ion-microscopy data

The extraction of adatom-adatom interaction energies from scanning-tunneling- and field-ion-microscopy images is discussed. For the case of comparing experimental data with a solved model (e.g., Monte Carlo simulations), an expression for the expected precision is derived. It is demonstrated that in the absence of any Monte Carlo calculations the interaction energies can be extracted if measurements are made at more than one temperature. This technique requires a factor of ∼2.6 additional measurements to obtain the interaction energy to the same precision as for a solved model.