  Plasmonics enables deep-subwavelength concentration of light and has become
important for fundamental studies as well as real-life applications. Two major
existing platforms of plasmonics are metallic nanoparticles and metallic films.
Metallic nanoparticles allow efficient coupling to far field radiation, yet
their synthesis typically leads to poor material quality. Metallic films offer
substantially higher quality materials, but their coupling to radiation is
typically jeopardized due to the large momentum mismatch with free space. Here,
we propose and theoretically investigate optically thin metallic films as an
ideal platform for high-radiative-efficiency plasmonics. For far-field
scattering, adding a thin high-quality metallic substrate enables a higher
quality factor while maintaining the localization and tunability that the
nanoparticle provides. For near-field spontaneous emission, a thin metallic
substrate, of high quality or not, greatly improves the field overlap between
the emitter environment and propagating surface plasmons, enabling high-Purcell
(total enhancement > $10^4$), high-quantum-yield (> 50 %) spontaneous emission,
even as the gap size vanishes (3$\sim$5 nm). The enhancement has almost
spatially independent efficiency and does not suffer from quenching effects
that commonly exist in previous structures.
