Elastic Properties of Few Nanometers Thick Polycrystalline MoS₂ Membranes: A Nondestructive Study

The performance gain-oriented nanostructurization has opened a new pathway for tuning mechanical features of solid matter vital for application and maintained performance. Simultaneously, the mechanical evaluation has been pushed down to dimensions way below 1 μm. To date, the most standard technique to study the mechanical properties of suspended 2D materials is based on nanoindentation experiments. In this work, by means of micro-Brillouin light scattering we determine the mechanical properties, that is, Young modulus and residual stress, of polycrystalline few nanometers thick MoS₂ membranes in a simple, contact-less, nondestructive manner. The results show huge elastic softening compared to bulk MoS₂, which is correlated with the sample morphology and the residual stress.