Polarized Raman spectroscopy to elucidate the texture of synthesized MoS₂

Texture has a significant impact on several key properties of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) films. Films with in-plane oriented grains have been successfully implemented in nano-and opto-electronic devices, whereas, films with out-of-plane oriented material have shown excellent performance in catalytic applications. It will be demonstrated that the texture of nanocrystalline TMD films can be determined with polarized Raman spectroscopy. A model describing the impact of texture on the Raman response of 2D-TMDs will be presented. For the specific case of MoS₂, the model was used to quantify the impact of texture on the relative strength of the A_1g and E¹_2g modes in both the unpolarized and polarized Raman configuration. Subsequently, the capability to characterize texture by polarized Raman was demonstrated on various MoS₂ films grown by atomic-layer deposition (ALD) and validated by complementary transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and synchrotron based 2D grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD) measurements. This also revealed how the texture evolved during ALD growth of MoS₂ and subsequent annealing of the films. The insights presented in this work allow a deeper understanding of Raman spectra of nanocrystalline TMDs and enable a rapid and non-destructive method to probe texture.