Structural anomalies in exfoliated WS₂: High pressure investigations on monolayer and nanocrystalline tungsten disulfide

A detailed high pressure X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy study is carried out on monolayer WS₂ and nanocrystalline WS₂. The monolayer sample is obtained by liquid exfoliation. Photoluminescence and Raman measurements show it to consist of a monolayer. Careful analysis of ambient and high pressure data indicates the emergence of a triclinic phase at about 5.8 GPa in patches embedded in the parent hexagonal phase. This raises a question mark over the structural purity of the exfoliated monolayer materials beyond certain stress conditions. Raman mode values and their full width at half maximum of the monolayer sample show anomalous changes at about 27 GPa, the pressure where the sample completely gets converted to the triclinic structure indicating the importance of strain in structural as well as electronic properties of two dimensional materials.