Biaxial strain tuning of the optical properties of single-layer transition metal dichalcogenides

Understand

Since their discovery single-layer semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides have attracted much attention thanks to their outstanding optical and mechanical properties.

• Strain engineering in these two-dimensional materials aims to tune their bandgap energy and to modify their optoelectronic properties by the application of external strain.
• In this paper we demonstrate that biaxial strain, both tensile and compressive, can be applied and released in a timescale of a few seconds in a reproducible way on transition metal dichalcogenides monolayers deposited on polymeric substrates.
• We can control the amount of biaxial strain applied by letting the substrate expand or compress.