A commercial graphite sheet to diffract and polarize X-rays

Pyrolytic Graphite Sheets (PGSs) are produced as convenient thermal interfaces because the highly oriented structure allows for an excellent thermal conductivity. Here we report on the fact that this material can also diffract X-rays. We succeeded in diffracting 5.9 keV and continuum photons on a 25 μm thick PGS, verifying that the lattice spacing is 3.35 A as expected. The low cost, lightness and the possibility to curve such thin sheets allow to think at new applications in X-ray astronomy.