Few-layer black phosphorus (BP) with an in-plane puckered crystalline structure has attracted intense interest for strain engineering due to both its significant anisotropy in mechanical and electrical properties and its high intrinsic strain limit. Here, we investigated the phonon response of few layer BP under uniaxial tensile strain (∼7%) with in situ polarized Raman spectroscopy. Together with the first-principles density functional theory (DFT) analysis, the anisotropic Poisson’s ratio in few-layer BP was verified as one of the primary factors that caused the large discrepancy in the trend of reported Raman frequency shift for strained BP, armchair (AC) direction in particular. By carefully including and excluding the anisotropic Poisson’s ratio in the DFT emulations, we rebuilt both trends reported for Raman mode shifts. Furthermore, the angle-resolved Raman spectroscopy was conducted in situ under tensile strain for systematic investigation of the in-plane anisotropy of BP phonon response. The experimentally observed thickness and crystallographic orientation dependence is elaborated using DFT theory as having a strong correlation between the strain-perturbated electronic-band structure and the phonon vibration modes. This study provides insight, both experimentally and theoretically, for the complex electron–phonon interaction behavior in strained BP, which enables diverse possibilities for the strain engineering of electrical and optical properties in BP and similar two-dimensional nanomaterials.

The intensity‐scan (I‐scan) technique to study the polarization‐dependent, nonlinear processes in exfoliated bulk ReS2 is utilized. The polarization‐dependent reflection and transmission of ReS2, from which the absorption coefficients are extracted using the transfer matrix method, are measured. Absorption coefficients under high laser peak power show a transition from saturable absorption (SA) to reverse saturable absorption when rotating the laser polarization with respect to the b‐axis. It is found that SA and excited‐state absorption (ESA) contribute to the nonlinear optical processes. Both the SA and ESA show strong dependence on the polarization angle, which is attributed to the anisotropic optical transition probability and electronic band structure in ReS2. The anisotropic nonlinear optical properties of ReS2 may find applications as saturable absorbers in lasers and optical modulators.

 Spectral bands are presented for remote detection of anhydrous carbonates and nitrates. Mid-IR band center comparisons for the v3 vibration compared to the v2 and v4 vibrations enable identification of carbonate chemistry. NIR band center comparisons for ~2.3 vs 2.5 µm, ~2.3 vs 4 µm, and ~3.4 vs 4 µm best enable identification of carbonate chemistry.

In this letter, van der Waals heterostructures (vdWHs) assembled by molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) and graphene monolayers are used as an experimental prototype to study the interaction between two-dimensional (2D) semiconducting and semimetal materials. The electron redistribution and energy transfer in graphene/MoS2 vdWHs are demonstrated by the combination of electrical measurements (Dirac-point shift) and Raman analyses. In graphene, the linear dispersive Dirac fermions can resonate with various-frequency “photons,” which “emit” from optically active MoS2 by the recombination of in-plane excitons. The experimental finding suggests that the photon-induced charge separation and accumulation might be in a low degree, thus affecting the performance of semiconductor/graphene-based 2D optoelectronic devices.

A pressing challenge in engineering devices with topological insulators (TIs) is that electron transport is dominated by the bulk conductance, and so dissipationless surface states account for only a small fraction of the conductance. Enhancing the surface-to-volume ratio is a common method to enhance the relative contribution of such states. In thin films with reduced thickness, the confinement results in symmetry-breaking and is critical for the experimental observation of topologically protected surface states. We employ micro-Raman and tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy to examine three different mechanisms of symmetry breaking in Bi 2 Te 3 TI thin films: surface plasmon generation, charge transfer, and application of a periodic strain potential. These mechanisms are facilitated by semiconducting and insulating substrates that modify the electronic and mechanical conditions at the sample surface and alter the long-range interactions between Bi 2 Te 3 and the substrate. We confirm the symmetry breaking in Bi 2 Te 3 via the emergence of the Raman-forbidden mode. Our results suggest that topological surface states can exist at the Bi 2 Te 3 /substrate interface, which is in a good agreement with previous theoretical results predicting the tunability of the vertical location of helical surface states in TI/substrate heterostructures.