  The development of photonic integrated circuits would benefit from a wider
selection of materials that can strongly-control near-infrared (NIR) light.
Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have been explored extensively for
visible spectrum opto-electronics, but the NIR properties of these layered
materials have been less-studied. The measurement of optical constants is the
foremost step to qualify TMDs for use in NIR photonics. Here we measure the
complex optical constants for select sulfide TMDs (bulk crystals of MoS2, TiS2
and ZrS2) via spectroscopic ellipsometry in the visible-to-NIR range. Through
Mueller matrix measurements and generalized ellipsometry, we explicitly measure
the direction of the ordinary optical axis. We support our measurements with
density functional theory (DFT) calculations, which agree with our measurements
and predict giant birefringence. We further propose that TMDs could find use as
photonic phase-change materials, by designing alloys that are thermodynamically
adjacent to phase boundaries between competing crystal structures, to realize
martensitic (i.e. displacive, order-order) switching.
