Graphene on Au-coated SiO$_{x}$ substrate: Its visibility and intrinsic core-level photoemission

With the motivation of precisely and intrinsically characterizing a exfoliate graphene using photoelectron spectroscopy, a conducting substrate having high optical contrast is greatly desired. Here, we demonstrate that exfoliated graphene can be optically visible on a thin 9-nm Au-coated SiO$_{x}$ substrate, and can be easily conducted into scanning photoelectron microscopy/spectroscopy (SPEM/S) studies. Because of the elimination of charging effect, precisely core-level characterization of exfoliated graphene is presented with different numbers of layers. Consequently, the usage of Au-coated SiO$_{x}$ substrate serves a simple but effective method to study pristine graphene by photoelectron spectroscopy and other electron-detection techniques.