We report on room-temperature Raman scattering measurements in few-layer crystals of exfoliated molybdenum ditelluride (MoTe2) performed with the use of 632.8 nm (1.96 eV) laser light excitation. In agreement with a recent study reported by G. Froehlicher et al 1 we observe a complex structure of the out-of-plane vibrational modes (A1g/A 1 ), which can be explained in terms of interlayer interactions between single atomic planes of MoTe2. In the case of low-energy shear and breathing modes of rigid interlayer vibrations, it is shown that their energy evolution with the number of layers can be well reproduced within a linear chain model with only the nearest neighbor interaction taken into account. Based on this model the corresponding in-plane and out-of-plane force constants are determined. We also show that the Raman scattering in MoTe2 measured using 514.5 nm (2.41 eV) laser light excitation results in much simpler spectra. We argue that the rich structure of the out-of-plane vibrational modes observed in Raman scattering spectra excited with the use of 632.8 nm laser light results from its resonance with the electronic transition at the M point of the MoTe2 first Brillouin zone.

We investigate the origin of emission lines apparent in the low-temperature photoluminescence spectra of n-doped WS 2 monolayer embedded in hexagonal BN layers using external magnetic fields and first-principles calculations. Apart from the neutral A exciton line, all observed emission lines are related to the negatively charged excitons. Consequently, we identify emissions due to both the bright (singlet and triplet) and dark (spin- and momentum-forbidden) negative trions as well as the phonon replicas of the latter optically inactive complexes. The semidark trions and negative biexcitons are distinguished. On the basis of their experimentally extracted and theoretically calculated g -factors, we identify three distinct families of emissions due to exciton complexes in WS 2 : bright, intravalley, and intervalley dark. The g -factors of the spin-split subbands in both the conduction and valence bands are also determined.

Low temperature and polarization resolved magneto-photoluminescence experiments are used to investigate the properties of dark excitons and dark trions in a monolayer of WS2 encapsulated in hexagonal BN (hBN). We...

Temperature-dependent (5 K-300 K) Raman scattering study of A 1g /A′ 1 phonon modes in mono-layer (1L), bilayer (2L), trilayer (3L), and tetralayer (4L) MoTe 2 is reported. The temperature evolution of the modes' intensity critically depends on the flake thickness. In particular with λ = 632.8-nm light excitation, a strongly non-monotonic dependence of the A 1g mode intensity is observed in 2L MoTe 2 . The intensity decreases with decreasing temperature down to 220 K, and the A 1g mode almost completely vanishes from the Stokes scattering spectrum in the temperature range between 160 K and 220 K. The peak recovers at lower temperatures, and at T = 5 K, it becomes three times more intense that at room temperature. Similar non-monotonic intensity evolution is observed for the out-of-plane mode in 3L MoTe 2 in which tellurium atoms in all three layers vibrate in-phase. The intensity of the other out-of-plane Raman-active mode (with vibrations of tellurium atoms in the central layer shifted by 180° with respect to the vibrations in outer layers) only weakly depends on temperature. The observed quenching of the Raman scattering in 2L and 3L MoTe 2 is attributed to a destructive interference between the resonant and non-resonant contributions to the Raman scattering amplitude. The observed "antiresonance" is related to the electronic excitation at the M point of the Brillouin zone in few-layer MoTe 2 .

The temperature effect on the Raman scattering efficiency is investigated in $$\varepsilon$$ ε -GaSe and $$\gamma$$ γ -InSe crystals. We found that varying the temperature over a broad range from 5 to 350 K permits to achieve both the resonant conditions and the antiresonance behaviour in Raman scattering of the studied materials. The resonant conditions of Raman scattering are observed at about 270 K under the 1.96 eV excitation for GaSe due to the energy proximity of the optical band gap. In the case of InSe, the resonant Raman spectra are apparent at about 50 and 270 K under correspondingly the 2.41 eV and 2.54 eV excitations as a result of the energy proximity of the so-called B transition. Interestingly, the observed resonances for both materials are followed by an antiresonance behaviour noticeable at higher temperatures than the detected resonances. The significant variations of phonon-modes intensities can be explained in terms of electron-phonon coupling and quantum interference of contributions from different points of the Brillouin zone.