Strain tuning of optical emission energy and polarization in monolayer and bilayer MoS<inf>2</inf>

We use micro-Raman and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy at 300 K to investigate the influence of uniaxial tensile strain on the vibrational and optoelectronic properties of monolayer and bilayer MoS2 on a flexible substrate. The initially degenerate E′ monolayer Raman mode is split into a doublet as a direct consequence of the strain applied to MoS 2 through Van der Waals coupling at the sample-substrate interface. We observe a strong shift of the direct band gap of 48 meV/(% of strain) for the monolayer and 46 meV/% for the bilayer, whose indirect gap shifts by 86 meV/%. We find a strong decrease of the PL polarization linked to optical valley initialization for both monolayer and bilayer samples, indicating that scattering to the spin-degenerate Γ valley plays a key role. © 2013 American Physical Society