Evidence for two distinct defect related luminescence features in monolayer MoS2

Abstract

Apart from the defect related emission peak which lies ∼100 meV below the A exciton/trion peak and is labeled D1 here, this study shows that there is another distinct feature D2 lying ∼200 meV below A in the photoluminescence spectrum of the exfoliated monolayer MoS2 on SiO2/Si substrates. The D2 feature is explicitly resolved at low temperature only in few samples. Both D1 and D2 do not show circular polarization anisotropy for 633 nm excitation. Both decay with the increase in temperature in a seemingly activated manner with similar activation energy of ∼50 meV, but D1 decays earlier and therefore D2 dominates at high temperature in all samples. Annealing in vacuum increases both D1 and D2 emission intensities while annealing under sulfur vapour decreases them. Comparison with reported theoretical studies on defects in monolayer MoS2 suggests that these two emissions possibly involve excitons bound to single and double sulphur vacancies, the latter binding excitons more strongly.