Molecular beam epitaxy of single-crystalline aluminum film for low threshold ultraviolet plasmonic nanolasers

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High-quality single-crystalline aluminum films have been grown on Si(111) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. The x-ray diffraction rocking curve of the (111) plane of the Al film shows a full width at half maximum of 564 arc sec for the sample grown at 100 °C, where the surface is atomically flat with a root-mean-square roughness of 0.40 nm in a scanned area of 3 × 3 μm2. By using such a high-quality Al film, we have demonstrated a room temperature ultraviolet surface-plasmon-polariton nanolaser at a wavelength of 360 nm with a threshold as low as ∼0.2 MW/cm2, which provides a powerful evidence for potential application of the single-crystalline Al film in plasmonic devices.