Computational Discovery and Experimental Demonstration of Boron Phosphide for All-Dielectric Nanophotonics

Dielectric and semiconductor nanomaterials with a high refractive index are important for realizing low-loss optical antennas and meta-surfaces. Inspite of this, only a few materials are commonly used and it is therefore reasonable to ask if better materials exists. In this work, we employ high-throughput computational screening and Mie theory to evaluate the performance of more than 2000 binary materials and find several interesting candidates. We specifically identify boron-phosphide as a very interesting candidate material in the visible and UV. We synthesize nanoparticles of this material using laser reshaping and evaluate its performance using both far-field and near-field measurements, clearly demonstrating that these particles support Mie resonances. Our work is a clear example of how a combination of computational screening and material synthesis can be used to guide the adoption of new materials in nano-optics.