Scanning tunneling microscopy is widely used to measure three dimensional surface profiles with an ultraprecision measuring resolution of nanometer range. This method however suffers from the difficulty to selectively decide the measuring region on the surface specimen. Emphasis of this study is therefore given to incorporating an optical microscope with scanning tunneling microscope, so that the measuring region can be confirmed by visual means. A new prototype of scanning tunneling microscope has been built as a result of this study by making the most of modern optoelectronic microscope technologies.
