Exciton tuning and strain imaging in WS2 supported on PDMS micropillars

Since the raise of 2D materials, significant research has been dedicated to their strain-dependent electronic and mechanical properties. In this work, we studied exciton energies and low-frequency phonon modes in CVD-grown mono- and few-layer WS2 transferred on PDMS micropillars. The modification of the band structure under strain was investigated by photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy at room temperature. Machine learning (ML) methods were used to analyze the PL spatial maps and facilitate the spectral deconvolution. For monolayer (1L) WS2, red shift in the exciton energy was detected as a function of the position, which was ascribed to the presence of residual strain. For three-layer (3L) strained WS2, a significant increase in the PL intensity corresponding to direct (K–K) band transition together with a change of exciton energy was observed. From the PL spectra, strain distribution maps were extracted for both studied samples, which strongly resembled the ML clustering results. Finally, the low-frequency Raman modes of WS2 were studied on both Si/SiO2 and PDMS substrates and no significant change of their frequency was observed for the 3L-WS2.