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Strain engineering in single-, bi- and tri-layer MoS2, MoSe2, WS2 and WSe2

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Abstract

Strain is a powerful tool to modify the optical properties of semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides like MoS2, MoSe2, WS2 and WSe2. In this work we provide a thorough description of the technical details to perform uniaxial strain measurements on these two-dimensional semiconductors and we provide a straightforward calibration method to determine the amount of applied strain with high accuracy. We then employ reflectance spectroscopy to analyze the strain tunability of the electronic properties of single-, bi- and tri-layer MoS2, MoSe2, WS2 and WSe2. Finally, we quantify the flake-to-flake variability by analyzing 15 different single-layer MoS2 flakes.

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Acknowledgements

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no 755655, ERC-StG 2017 project 2D-TOPSENSE). R. F. acknowledges the support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness through a Juan de la Cierva-formación fellowship 2017 FJCI-2017-32919. H. L. acknowledges the grant from China Scholarship Council (CSC) under No. 201907040070.

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  1. Felix Carrascoso and Hao Li contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Materials Science Factory, Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 28049, Madrid, Spain

    Felix Carrascoso, Hao Li, Riccardo Frisenda & Andres Castellanos-Gomez

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  1. Felix Carrascoso
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  2. Hao Li
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Correspondence to Riccardo Frisenda or Andres Castellanos-Gomez.

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Carrascoso, F., Li, H., Frisenda, R. et al. Strain engineering in single-, bi- and tri-layer MoS2, MoSe2, WS2 and WSe2. Nano Res. 14, 1698–1703 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2918-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2918-2

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