We wish to thank Laurent Pham-Van (CEA/IRAMIS/SPEC/LEPO) for fruitful discussions on the tip etching process and Sylvain Foucquart (CEA/IRAMIS/NIMBE/LIONS) for his technical assistance. José Antonio Morán Meza would also like to acknowledge financial support from the Peru’s National Council of Science and Technology (Concytec), the Réseau Thématique de Recherche Avancée (RTRA-Triangle de la Physique), and the CEA/Direction des Relations Internationales (DRI).

The fabrication of ultra-sharp tips from carbon fiber (CF), which are mounted on a qPlus probe for combined dynamic scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and frequency modulation atomic force microscopy (FM-AFM) experiments, is reported. The carbon fiber tips were electrochemically etched in a KOH or NaOH solution, using different electronic devices. CF tips with an apex radius ∼10 nm, as deduced from the measured slopes of the Fowler–Nordheim plots (kR < 70 nm for k ∼ 6), were routinely obtained with a homemade electronic device that controls the intensity of the etching current. Then, these conductive CF tips were also characterized by imaging the 6H-SiC(0 0 0 1) surface covered by an epitaxial graphene layer in ultra-high vacuum (UHV). The lattice of the R30° reconstruction was regularly imaged by STM working either in non-oscillating mode or in dynamic mode, which also maps the ...