1) Open the .ai file in Illustrator.

2)Select the top layer in the Layers panel.

2) Click the icon shown below and select Release to Layers.

3)You can see that the sublayers are expanded.

4) Select the layers you want to export as a PSD file and choose Export > Export as from the File menu at the top.

4) Select the PSD file format

5) If you check the option below (write layers), the layers will not be merged when saving the PSD.

6) Load the PSD file in Photoshop