Epitaxial Growth of Atomically Smooth Aluminum on Silicon and Its Intrinsic Optical Properties

Aluminum (Al) provides an excellent material platform for plasmonic applications in the ultraviolet (UV) regime due to its low loss coefficient at UV wavelengths. To fully realize the potential of this material, it is imperative to create nanostructures with minimal defects in order to prevent light scattering and better support plasmonic resonances. In this work, we report the successful development of atomically smooth epitaxial Al films on silicon. These epitaxial Al thin films facilitate the creation of fine plasmonic nanostructures and demonstrate considerable loss reduction in the UV frequency range, in comparison to the polycrystalline Al films based on spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements. Remarkably, our measurements on the epitaxial Al film grown using the two-step method suggest that the intrinsic loss in Al is significantly lower, by up to a factor of 2 in the UV range, with respect to current widely quoted Palik’s values extracted from polycrystalline films. These high-quality epitaxial Al films provide an ideal platform for UV plasmonics. In addition, the availability of intrinsic optical constants will enable more accurate theoretical predictions to guide the device design.