Negative refraction in molybdenum disulfide

Recently, negative refractions have been demonstrated in uniaxial crystals with no necessary of negative permittivity and permeability. However, the small anisotropy parameterγin the uniaxial crystals limits the negative refraction occurrence only in a small range of the incident light angle, retarding its practical applications. In this paper, we report negative refraction induced by a pronounced anisotropic behavior in the bulk MoS(2). Using the first-principles, the dielectric function and refractive index calculations confirm a uniaxial trait of MoS(2) with a calculated anisotropy parameterγlarger than 2.5 in the entire range of visible wavelength. The critical incident angle to trigger a negative refraction in the bulk MoS(2) is calculated up to 90°. The finite-difference time-domain simulations prove that the incident light with a density of 59.5% can be negatively refracted in a MoS(2) slab with a thickness of 0.1 µm. Our results open up a new pathway for MoS(2)-like materials to a novel field of optical integration.