Direct Identification of Monolayer Rhenium Diselenide by an Individual Diffraction Pattern

In the current extensive studies of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), compared to hexagonal layered materials, like graphene, hBN and MoS2, low symmetry layered two‐dimensional (2D) crystals have shown great potential for applications in anisotropic devices. Rhenium diselenide (ReSe2) has the bulk space group P1ത and belongs to triclinic crystal system with a deformed cadmium iodide type structure. Here we propose an electron diffraction based method to distinguish monolayer ReSe2 membrane from multilayer ReSe2, and its two different vertical orientations, our method could also be applicable to other low symmetry crystal systems, including both triclinic and monoclinic lattices, as long as their third unit‐cell basis vectors are not perpendicular to their basal planes. Our experimental results are well explained by kinematical electron diffraction theory and corresponding simulations. The generalization of our method to other 2D materials, like graphene, is also discussed.