Orthorhombic black phosphorus (BP) and other layered materials, such as gallium telluride (GaTe) and tin selenide (SnSe), stand out among two-dimensional (2D) materials owing to their anisotropic in-plane structure. This anisotropy adds a new dimension to the properties of 2D materials and stimulates the development of angle-resolved photonics and electronics. However, understanding the effect of anisotropy has remained unsatisfactory to date, as shown by a number of inconsistencies in the recent literature. We use angle-resolved absorption and Raman spectroscopies to investigate the role of anisotropy on the electron-photon and electron-phonon interactions in BP. We highlight, both experimentally and theoretically, a nontrivial dependence between anisotropy and flake thickness and photon and phonon energies. We show that once understood, the anisotropic optical absorption appears to be a reliable and simple way to identify the crystalline orientation of BP, which cannot be determined from Raman spectroscopy without the explicit consideration of excitation wavelength and flake thickness, as commonly used previously.
Layered gallium telluride (GaTe) has attracted much attention recently, due to its extremely high photoresponsivity, short response time, and promising thermoelectric performance. Different from most commonly studied two-dimensional (2D) materials, GaTe has in-plane anisotropy and a low symmetry with the C2h(3) space group. Investigating the in-plane optical anisotropy, including the electron-photon and electron-phonon interactions of GaTe is essential in realizing its applications in optoelectronics and thermoelectrics. In this work, the anisotropic light-matter interactions in the low-symmetry material GaTe are studied using anisotropic optical extinction and Raman spectroscopies as probes. Our polarized optical extinction spectroscopy reveals the weak anisotropy in optical extinction spectra for visible light of multilayer GaTe. Polarized Raman spectroscopy proves to be sensitive to the crystalline orientation of GaTe, and shows the intricate dependences of Raman anisotropy on flake thickness, photon and phonon energies. Such intricate dependences can be explained by theoretical analyses employing first-principles calculations and group theory. These studies are a crucial step toward the applications of GaTe especially in optoelectronics and thermoelectrics, and provide a general methodology for the study of the anisotropy of light-matter interactions in 2D layered materials with in-plane anisotropy.
Raman spectroscopy of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) is reviewed based on our recent theoretical and experimental works. First, we discuss the semi-classical and quantum mechanical description for the polarization dependence of Raman spectra of TMDs in which the optical dipole transition matrix elements as a function of laser excitation energy are important for understanding the polarization dependence of the Raman intensity and Raman tensor. Overviewing the symmetry of TMDs, we discuss the dependence of the Raman spectra of TMDs on layer thickness, polarization, laser energy and the structural phase. Furthermore, we discuss the Raman spectra of twisted bilayer and heterostructures of TMDs. Finally, we give our perspectives on the Raman spectroscopy of TMDs.
In this work, by combining transmission electron microscopy and polarized Raman spectroscopy for the 1T' MoTe flakes with different thicknesses, we found that the polarization dependence of Raman intensity is given as a function of excitation laser wavelength, phonon symmetry, and phonon frequency, but has weak dependence on the flake thickness from few-layer to multilayer. In addition, the frequency of Raman peaks and the relative Raman intensity are sensitive to flake thickness, which manifests Raman spectroscopy as an effective probe for thickness of 1T' MoTe. Our work demonstrates that polarized Raman spectroscopy is a powerful and nondestructive method to quickly identify the crystal structure and thickness of 1T' MoTe simultaneously, which opens up opportunities for the in situ probe of anisotropic properties and broad applications of this novel material.
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