A high-reflectivity, ambient-stable graphene mirror for neutral atomic and molecular beams

We report a He and H(2) diffraction study of graphene-terminated Ru(0001) thin films grown epitaxially on c-axis sapphire. Even for samples exposed for several weeks to ambient conditions, brief annealing in ultrahigh vacuum restored extraordinarily high specular reflectivities for He and H(2) beams (23% and 7% of the incident beam, respectively). The quality of the angular distributions recorded with both probes exceeds the one obtained from in-situ prepared graphene on Ru( 0001) single crystals. Our results for graphene-terminated Ru thin films represent a significant step toward ambient tolerant, high-reflectivity curved surface mirrors for He-atom microscopy. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3663866]