Splitting of the monolayer out-of-plane A'1 Raman mode in few-layer WS2

TL;DR

This study investigates how the out-of-plane A'1 Raman mode in WS2 evolves with layer number, revealing multiple vibrational components and their symmetry properties through experiments and density functional theory calculations.

Contribution

It demonstrates the splitting of the A'1 Raman mode into multiple components in few-layer WS2 and attributes these to specific vibrational patterns and symmetries, supported by DFT calculations.

Findings

Multiple Raman components observed with increasing layers

All components visible near resonance regardless of activity

Theoretical support for vibrational mode assignments

Abstract

We present Raman measurements of mono- and few-layer WS2. We study the monolayer A'1 mode around 420 cm(-1) and its evolution with the number of layers. We show that with increasing layer number there is an increasing number of possible vibrational patterns for the out-of-plane Raman mode: in N-layer WS2 there are N Gamma-point phonons evolving from the A'1 monolayer mode. For an excitation energy close to resonance with the excitonic transition energy we were able to observe all of these N components, irrespective of their Raman activity. Density functional theory calculations support the experimental findings and make it possible to attribute the modes to their respective symmetries. The findings described here are of general importance for all other phonon modes in WS2 and other layered transition metal dichalcogenide systems in the few layer regime.