  High harmonic generation (HHG) from semiconductors and insulators has become
a very active area of research due to its great potential for developing
compact HHG devices. Here we show that by growing monolayers (ML) of insulators
on single-crystal metal surfaces, one can tune the harmonic spectrum by just
varying the thickness of the ultrathin layer, not the laser properties. This is
shown from numerical solutions of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation for
$n$ML NaCl/Cu(111) systems ($n=1-50$) based on realistic potentials available
in the literature. Remarkably, the harmonic cutoff increases linearly with $n$
and as much as an order of magnitude when going from $n$ $=$ 1 to 30, while
keeping the laser intensity low and the wavelength in the near-infrared range.
Furthermore, the degree of control that can be achieved in this way is much
higher than by varying the laser intensity. The origin of this behavior is the
reduction of electronic "friction" when moving from the essentially discrete
energy spectrum associated with a few-ML system to the continuous energy
spectrum (bands) inherent to an extended periodic system.
