High quality sub-monolayer, monolayer, and bilayer graphene on Ru(0001)

High quality sub-monolayer, monolayer, and bilayer graphene were grown on Ru(0001). For the sub-monolayer graphene, the size of graphene islands with zigzag edges can be controlled by the dose of ethylene exposure. By increasing the dose of ethylene to 100 Langmuir at a high substrate temperature (800 °C), high quality single-crystalline monolayer graphene was synthesized on Ru(0001). High quality bilayer graphene was formed by further increasing the dose of ethylene while reducing the cooling rate to 5 °C/min. Raman spectroscopy revealed the vibrational states of graphene, G and 2D peaks appeared only in the bilayer graphene, which demonstrates that it behaves as the intrinsic graphene. Our present work affords methods to produce high quality sub-monolayer, monolayer, and bilayer graphene, both for basic research and applications.