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A steady-current image is not supported by the electrical connection drawn. tunnelling atomic force microscopy requires a conducting AFM probe, an applied bias voltage and a continuous return path from the contacted region to the current amplifier. graphene is conducting, but a flake on insulating glass is not electrically grounded merely because the other side or edge of the glass is earthed. Charging transients or displacement current are not its steady conductivity. Add a metal contact actually touching the graphene before using its current contrast; ordinary force-based surface topography can still be recorded without that contact. The manufacturer's nanostructure measurements explicitly distinguish objects connected to conducting pads from unconnected particles on the same insulating substrate.^[ref]

The map shows Coulomb blockade with discrete single-electron charging: low-current diamonds separate charge-stable regions from finite-bias transport windows. A small conducting island or quantum dot must be tunnel-coupled to source and drain, with a gate shifting its electrochemical potential. Charging prevents sequential transport until an island addition/removal energy enters the bias voltage window.

The tunnel resistances should substantially exceed the resistance quantum $h/e^2\simeq 25.8\mathrm{k\Omega }$, preventing charge fluctuations from washing out integer island occupancy, while still permitting a measurable current. Temperature and tunnel broadening must be small compared with the addition-energy scale. Here the smaller diamonds imply $e^2/C_{\Sigma }\simeq 2.5\mathrm{meV}$, so $k_{B}T\ll 2.5\mathrm{meV}$, or $T\ll 29\mathrm{K}$; resolving the inferred 1 meV orbital structure requires the stricter scale $T\ll 12\mathrm{K}$. Stray capacitance and unintended multiple islands can complicate this simple interpretation.