To check the presence of such residual thiols on the surface of the nanosheets, we first performed FTIR on dried nanosheets to eliminate solvent effects. The FTIR spectra of different compounds is shown in Figure . Increasing the chain length in the thiols induces a shift in the S-H bonding, which causes the S-H bonding peak for ODT to occur below 600 cm -1 . It is no longer measurable using our setup. Furthermore, WS2 NMLs absorb a high amount of FTIR signals, and less than 20% of the infrared light is collected after interaction with the sample. Consequently, the signal-to-noise ratio is low and the results are difficult to interpret. For these reasons, FTIR results were inconclusive for analyzing the ligands composition on the WS2 NMLs synthesized with thiols, and the results can neither prove nor disprove the presence of thiols on the NMLs surface.