The onset of decomposition temperatures of tungsten thiolates can also be indicative of their stability in solution during synthesis, with a lower onset temperature correlating to lower stability. This has been investigated as well using TGA, showing an onset of decomposition temperature for W(DDTate)6 at 223°C, W(HDTate)6 at 249°C, and W(ODTate)6 at 268°C (Figure ). The increase in the decomposition temperature occurs with increasing chain length of the thiol. An attractive hypothesis is than that the in-situ formation of tungsten thiolate leads to the creation of well-dispersed 1T'-WS2 NMLs by regulating the reactivity of the tungsten precursor. Reducing the reaction rate by conjugating the reactants produces the metastable 1T' phase. This phase generally occurs due to the presence of excess charges in the NMLs and then in the reaction system. Thus, due to the presence of charges on the nanosheets, oleylammonium ligands are bound to the surface and are responsible for the colloidal stability. Another protocol was developed to clarify the role of thiols in the reaction. As has been already discussed, the reaction of WCl6 with thiols forms tungsten hexathiolate and HCl. This reaction happens at room temperature, so instead of adding ODT into the reaction mixture, WCl6, ODT, OAm, and CS2 were mixed to prepare the injection mixture. As explained in detail in the methods section, the injection mixture was added into the OAm at 320°C over a period of 30 minutes. The TEM image and the absorption spectrum are presented in Figure . The TEM image illustrates that aggregated nanosheets are produced by this protocol and the absorption spectrum confirms the formation of the 1T'-WS2 phase. Although the amount of ODT in both protocols is the same, the dispersion is here completely different. One can hypothesize that when ODT is present in the reaction medium, at every moment during the injection, tungsten precursors are at low concentrations and in presence of a large excess of ODT, which can efficiently bind the tungsten and regulate the reactivity. On the contrary, when ODT is added into the injection mixture, the amount of ODT relative to the reactive tungsten species during injection increases over time in the injection mixture and is too low at the early stages of the synthesis to properly regulate the NMLs growth.