Optical study of the structural change in ReS2 single crystals using polarized thermoreflectance spectroscopy

In this report the optical properties of ReS2 are characterized using polarized thermoreflectance (PTR) measurements in the temperature range between 25 and 300 K. Single crystals of ReS2 were grown by chemical vapor transport method using Br2 as a transport agent. Crystal morphologies of the as-grown rhenium disulfides were shown to possess two different kinds of the structural phases after crystallization. Observing in detail on the crystallized solids, the crystal phases can be essentially divided into two distinct types of normal triclinic layer and tetragonal structure. The PTR experiments were done with optical polarizations along and perpendicular to the crystals' b-axis for both layer and tetragonal crystals. From the experimental analyses of PTR measurements the occurrence of structural change in ReS2 is mostly probable caused by the atomic bonding deformation along -axis, which is parallel to the Re4 parallelogram consisted diamond chains. Temperature dependences of the band-edge transitions for the different structural phases of ReS2 are analyzed. The parameters that describe temperature variations of the transition energies and broadening parameters for both layered and tetragonal ReS2 are evaluated and discussed.