Observation of strain effect on the suspended graphene by polarized Raman spectroscopy

We report the strain effect of suspended graphene prepared by micromechanical method. Under a fixed measurement orientation of scattered light, the position of the 2D peaks changes with incident polarization directions. This phenomenon is explained by a proposed mode in which the peak is effectively contributed by an unstrained and two uniaxial-strained sub-areas. The two axes are tensile strain. Compared to the unstrained sub-mode frequency of 2,672 cm−1, the tension causes a red shift. The 2D peak variation originates in that the three effective sub-modes correlate with the light polarization through different relations. We develop a method to quantitatively analyze the positions, intensities, and polarization dependences of the three sub-peaks. The analysis reflects the local strain, which changes with detected area of the graphene film. The measurement can be extended to detect the strain distribution of the film and, thus, is a promising technology on graphene characterization.