High refractive index and extreme biaxial optical anisotropy of rhenium diselenide for applications in all-dielectric nanophotonics

We establish a simple quantitative criterium for the search of new dielectric materials with high values of refractive index in the visible range. It is demonstrated, that for light frequencies below the bandgap, the latter is determined by the dimensionless parameter eta calculated as the ratio of the sum of the widths of conduction and valence bands and the bandgap. Small values of this parameter, which can be achieved in materials with almost flat bands, lead to dramatic increase of the refractive index. We illustrate this rule with a particular example of rhenium dichalcogenides, for which we perform ab initio calculations of the band structure and optical susceptibility and predict the values of the refractive index n > 5 in a wide frequency range around 1 eV together with comparatively low losses. Our findings open new perspectives in search for the new high-index/low-loss materials for all-dielectric nanophotonics.