  Plasmonics currently faces the problem of seemingly inevitable optical losses
occurring in the metallic components that challenges the implementation of
essentially any application. In this work we show that Ohmic losses are reduced
in certain layered metals, such as the transition metal dichalcogenide TaS$_2$,
due to an extraordinarily small density of states for scattering in the near-IR
originating from their special electronic band structure. Based on this
observation we propose a new class of band structure engineered van der Waals
layered metals composed of hexagonal transition metal chalcogenide-halide
layers with greatly suppressed intrinsic losses. Using first-principles
calculations we show that the suppression of optical losses lead to improved
performance for thin film waveguiding and transformation optics.
