Enhancement of Plasmonic Performance in Epitaxial Silver at Low Temperature.

We report longer surface plasmon polariton propagation distance based on crystalline crystal silver at low temperature. Although enhanced plasmonic performance at low temperature has been predicted for a long time, it has not been directly observed on polycrystalline silver films which suffer from significant plasmonic losses due to grain boundaries and rough silver surface. Here we show that longer propagation distance can be achieved with epitaxial silver at low temperature. Importantly, the enhancement at low temperature are consistent across silver films grown with different methods.

Intrinsic optical properties and enhanced plasmonic response of epitaxial silver.

Using atomically smooth epitaxial silver films, new optical permittivity highlighting significant loss reduction in the visible frequency range is extracted. Largely enhanced propagation distances of surface plasmon polaritons are measured, confirming the low intrinsic loss in silver. The new permittivity is free of extrinsic spectral features associated with grain boundaries and localized plasmons inevitably present in thermally deposited films.