Spectroscopic Ellipsometry Study of the Temperature Dependences of the Optical and Exciton Properties of MoS2 and WS2 Monolayers

The optical properties of MoS₂ and WS₂ monolayers are significantly influenced by fabrication methods, especially with respect to the behavior of excitons at the <i>K</i>-point of the Brillouin zone. Using spectroscopic ellipsometry, we obtain the complex dielectric functions of monolayers of these materials from cryogenic to room temperatures over the energy range 1.5 to 6.0 eV. The excitonic structure of each sample is analyzed meticulously by fitting the data to a standard analytical function to extract the energy positions of the excitons at each temperature. At low temperatures, excitonic structures are blue-shifted and sharpened due to the reduction in phonon noise and lattice distance. The excitons of monolayers fabricated by MOCVD separate into sub-structures at low temperatures, while monolayers grown by LPCVD and APCVD remain a single peak. The origin of these peaks as charged or neutral excitons follows from their temperature dependences.