  Chemical exfoliation of MoS$_2$ via Li-intercalation route has led to many
desirable properties and spectacular applications due to the presence of a
metastable state in addition to the stable H phase. However, the nature of the
specific metastable phase formed, and its basic charge conduction properties
have remained controversial. Using spatially resolved Raman spectroscopy (~1
micrometer resolution) and photoelectron spectroscopy (~120 nm resolution), we
probe such chemically exfoliated MoS$_2$ samples in comparison to a
mechanically exfoliated H phase sample and confirm that the dominant metastable
state formed by this approach is a distorted T' state with a small
semiconducting gap. Investigating two such samples with different extents of Li
residues present, we establish that Li+ ions, not only help to exfoliate
MoS$_2$ into few layer samples, but also contribute to enhancing the relative
stability of the metastable state as well as dope the system with electrons,
giving rise to a lightly doped small bandgap system with the T' structure,
responsible for its spectacular properties.
