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The effect of laser irradiation on chemically vapor deposited (CVD) graphene was studied by analyzing the temporal evolution of Raman spectra acquired under various illumination conditions. The spectra showed that the normalized intensity of the defect-related peak increases with the square root of the exposure time and varies almost linearly with the laser power density. Furthermore, the hardness of graphene to radiation damage depends on its intrinsic structural quality. The results suggest that, contrary to the common belief, micro-Raman spectroscopy cannot be considered a noninvasive tool for the characterization of graphene. The experimental observations are compatible with a model that we derived from the interpretative approach of the Staebler–Wronski effect in hydrogenated amorphous silicon; this approach assumes that the recombination of photoexcited carriers induces the breaking of weak C–C bonds.

When a thin gold layer is deposited onto the native oxide of a silicon wafer and is annealed at temperatures greater than 600 °C, peculiar circular features, few micrometers in diameter, with a regular polygon at the centre of each circle, reminiscent of so called “alien” crop circles, can be observed. A model has been recently proposed in Matthews et al. [1], where the formation of such circular structures is attributed to the interdiffusion of gold and silicon through holes in the native oxide induced by the weakening of the amorphous silica matrix occurring during the annealing process. The rupture of the liquid Au/Si eutectic disc surrounding the pinhole in the oxide causes the debris to be pulled to the edges of the disk, forming Au droplets around it and leaving an empty zone of bare silicon oxide. In this paper, we present a morphological study and a RBS/PIXE analyses of these circular structures, carried out by scanning electron microscopy and by 4 MeV C microbeam, respectively. The results confirm the depletion of gold in the denuded circular zones, and the presence of gold droplets in the centers, which can be attributed to the Au segregation occurring during the cooling stage.