Epitaxial aluminum plasmonics covering full visible spectrum

Nanophotonics

article

Chang-Wei Cheng¹  Soniya S. Raja²  Ching-Wen Chang³  Xin-Quan Zhang⁴  Po-Yen Liu⁴  Yi-Hsien Lee⁴  Chih-Kang Shih⁵  Shangjr Gwo¹ 

[1] Department of Physics, National Tsing-Hua University;Institute of NanoEngineering and Microsystems, National Tsing-Hua University;Research Center for Applied Sciences;Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Tsing-Hua University;Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin

关键词: aluminum epitaxial film;    molecular-beam epitaxy;    monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide;    plasmonic surface lattice;    surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy;    surface plasmon interferometry;   

DOI  :  10.1515/nanoph-2020-0402

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: De Gruyter

【 摘 要 】

Aluminum has attracted a great deal of attention as an alternative plasmonic material to silver and gold because of its natural abundance on Earth, material stability, unique spectral capability in the ultraviolet spectral region, and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor compatibility. Surprisingly, in some recent studies, aluminum has been reported to outperform silver in the visible range due to its superior surface and interface properties. Here, we demonstrate excellent structural and optical properties measured for aluminum epitaxial films grown on sapphire substrates by molecular-beam epitaxy under ultrahigh vacuum growth conditions. Using the epitaxial growth technique, distinct advantages can be achieved for plasmonic applications, including high-fidelity nanofabrication and wafer-scale system integration. Moreover, the aluminum film thickness is controllable down to a few atomic monolayers, allowing for plasmonic ultrathin layer devices. Two kinds of aluminum plasmonic applications are reported here, including precisely engineered plasmonic substrates for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy and high-quality-factor plasmonic surface lattices based on standing localized surface plasmons and propagating surface plasmon polaritons, respectively, in the entire visible spectrum (400–700 nm).

【 授权许可】

CC BY