Crystallographic image processing (CIP) techniques may be utilized in scanning probe microscopy (SPM) to glean information that has been obscured by signals from multiple probe tips. This may be of particular importance for scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and requires images from samples that are periodic in two dimensions (2D). The image-forming current for double-tips in STM is derived with a slight modification of the independent-orbital approximation (IOA) to allow for two or more tips. Our analysis clarifies why crystallographic averaging works well in removing the effects of a blunt STM tip (that consists of multiple mini-tips) from recorded 2D periodic images and also outlines the limitations of this image-processing technique for certain spatial separations of STM double-tips. Simulations of multiple mini-tip effects in STM images (that ignore electron interference effects) may be understood as modeling multiple mini-tip (or tip shape) effects in images that were recorded with other types of SPMs as long as the lateral sample feature sizes to be imaged are much larger than the effective scanning probe tip sizes.

中文翻译：

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通过晶体学平均从扫描隧道显微镜图像中去除多尖端伪像

结晶图像处理（CIP）技术可用于扫描探针显微镜（SPM）中，以收集已被来自多个探针尖端的信号遮盖的信息。这对于扫描隧道显微镜（STM）可能特别重要，并且需要来自二维周期性样品（2D）的图像。STM中双尖端的成像电流是通过对独立轨道近似值（IOA）稍加修改而得出的，以允许使用两个或更多尖端。我们的分析阐明了为什么结晶平均能很好地消除记录的2D周期图像中钝的STM尖端（由多个微型尖端组成）的影响，并且概述了这种图像处理技术对于STM double-的某些空间分离的局限性提示。