Graphene on gallium arsenide: Engineering the visibility

Graphene consists of single or few layers of crystalline ordered carbon atoms. Its visibility on oxidized silicon (Si/SiO2) enabled its discovery and spawned numerous studies of its unique electronic properties. The combination of graphene with the equally unique electronic material gallium arsenide (GaAs) has up to now lacked such easy visibility. Here we demonstrate that a deliberately tailored GaAs-aluminum arsenide (AlAs) multilayer structure makes graphene just as visible on GaAs as on Si/SiO2. We show that standard microscope images of exfoliated graphite on GaAs/AlAs suffice to identify mono-, bi-, and multilayers of graphene. Raman data confirm our results.