Janus monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides, where one of the two chalcogen layers is substituted with a different kind of chalcogen atoms, are pushing the properties of two dimensional materials into new territories. Yet only little is known about this new kind of material class, mainly due to the challenging synthesis. In this work we propose a method to prepare high quality Janus MoSSe monolayers from as-exfoliated MoSe2 by thermal sulfurization. With this we aim to pave a way for more exotic Janus monolayers, which have been out of the experimental reach thus far. The synthesized MoSSe is diligently characterized by room- and low-temperature Raman and photoluminescence spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy correlated with Raman mappings, and time-correlated single-photon counting. The latter providing new information on the lifetime of excitons in Janus MoSSe monolayers. In addition, we report an enhanced trion formation at low temperatures and a relatively high excitonic transition energy that is indicative of less defect states and strain, and therefore a high sample quality.
Published in: "arXiv Material Science".