Gloria Anemone

Quality of graphene on sapphire: long-range order from helium diffraction versus lattice defects from Raman spectroscopy

We report a new method to produce high-quality, transparent graphene/sapphire samples, using Cu as a catalyst. The starting point is a high-quality graphene layer prepared by CVD on Cu(111)/Al2O3. Graphene on sapphire is obtained in situ by evaporation of the Cu film in UHV. He-diffraction, atomic force microscopy (AFM), Raman spectroscopy and optical transmission have been used to assess the quality of graphene in a metal free area. We used helium atom scattering as a sensitive probe of the crystallinity of the graphene on sapphire. The observation of high reflectivity and clear diffraction peaks demonstrates the presence of flat and homogeneous graphene domains over lateral scales of microns, consistent with the AFM results. Surprisingly, putting graphene on sapphire improves the quality of the He-diffraction spectra. Graphene forms a moire pattern with a (11 × 11) periodicity, aligned with the (1 × 1) sapphire unit cell. The lattice constant of graphene on sapphire is a = (2.44 ± 0.02) A. The phonon dispersion of the graphene flexural mode has been measured. This allowed the determination of the bending rigidity k = 0.61 ± 0.15 eV, and the graphene–sapphire coupling strength g = (5.8 ± 0.4) × 1019 N m−3. The uniformity of the graphene has also been investigated by Raman mapping. Judging by the ratio of the 2D to G peaks, the quality of the graphene is not degraded by Cu removal. The high transparency (80%) measured in the visible range makes this system suitable for many applications that require hybrid properties commonly associated with metals (conductivity) and insulators (transparency). Our study shows that He-diffraction and Raman provide crucial information on quite different, complementary aspects of the same samples.

Low-energy methane scattering from Pt(111).

We have measured the temperature dependence of angular distributions of CH4 from Pt(111) at an incident energy of 109 meV. A broad angular distribution has been observed along the two main symmetry directions, whereby the peak center shifts from the supra-specular position to the sub-specular position when the surface temperature increases from 120 K to 800 K. Different widths have been measured for the scattering patterns along the [ 1¯01 ] and the [ 2¯11 ] azimuthal directions. Based on calculations performed within the binary collision model, these differences have been ascribed to different corrugations of the CH4-Pt(111) interaction potential along the two high-symmetry directions. This corrugation has been estimated from the model calculations to amount ∼0.03 Å, a factor of three larger than the one measured with helium diffraction.

Ultrasmooth metal thin films on curved fused silica by laser polishing

The fabrication of atomically smooth metal films on supporting oxides is a quite demanding task, since most physical vapor deposition methods used on metals do not work properly on oxide substrates. Here, we report an alternative procedure, based on performing laser polishing of a fused silica substrate before depositing the metallic thin film. This reduces the RMS surface roughness of fused silica by ca. 33%, and increases the maximum grain size of the metallic film from 200 nm to 1200 nm. The method has been applied to a fused silica parabolic lens, which has been coated with a graphene-terminated Ru thin film. The reduction of surface roughness caused by laser polishing leads to the formation of ultrasmooth Ru thin films. Crystallinity and subnanometer roughness of the metal coating are demonstrated by the observation of He diffraction from a macroscopically curved surface.