Hiroshi Yamatani

Hydrothermal method grown large-sized zinc oxide single crystal as fast scintillator for future extreme ultraviolet lithography

The scintillation properties of a hydrothermal method grown zinc oxide (ZnO) crystal are evaluated for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) laser excitation at 13.9nm wavelength. The exciton emission lifetime at around 380nm is determined to be 1.1ns, almost identical to ultraviolet laser excitation cases. This fast response time is sufficiently short for characterizing EUV lithography light sources having a few nanoseconds duration. The availability of large size ZnO crystal up to 3in. is quite attractive for future lithography and imaging applications.

Characterization of a high-brilliance soft x-ray laser at 13.9 nm by use of an oscillator-amplifier configuration.

We have improved a highly coherent x-ray laser at 13.9 nm using an oscillator-amplifier configuration. To improve a high-brilliance x-ray laser, we adopted traveling wave pumping for the amplifier target and rotated the amplifier target 3-4 mrad in the counterclockwise direction. Thereby, a seed x-ray laser can be amplified by medium plasma of the amplifier target with a high gain coefficient. The amplified x-ray laser has the output energy of approximately 1.3 microJ, corresponding to a large photon flux of 6.5 x 10(10) photons/pulse and a high peak brilliance of 5 x 10(26) photons/(s x mm(2) x mrad(2) x 0.01% bandwidth).

Temperature dependence of scintillation properties for a hydrothermal-method-grown zinc oxide crystal evaluated by nickel-like silver laser pulses

The scintillation properties of a hydrothermal-method-grown zinc oxide (ZnO) crystal in the extreme ultraviolet region are evaluated using a nickel-like silver laser with an emission wavelength of 13.9 nm. The temperature dependence of the scintillation properties of the ZnO emission at a wavelength of ~380 nm is investigated. The emission exhibits a broad peak at 386 nm with a full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 15 nm at room temperature (298 K). Decreasing the ZnO crystal temperature to 25 K causes the peak position to be blueshifted by 12 nm while the FWHM becomes narrower by 9 nm as compared with the room temperature case.

Demonstration of a highly coherent 13.9 nm x-ray laser from a silver tape target

A highly coherent 13.9 nm x-ray laser (XRL) is generated under an oscillator-amplifier configuration using a new tape target system and a driver laser system with a 0.1 Hz repetition rate. The output energy is comparable to the XRL generated with a silver-deposited slab target, and the pointing stability using the new tape target system is better than conventional slab targets.

Intensity correlation measurement system by picosecond single shot soft x-ray laser.

We developed a new soft x-ray speckle intensity correlation spectroscopy system by use of a single shot high brilliant plasma soft x-ray laser. The plasma soft x-ray laser is characterized by several picoseconds in pulse width, more than 90% special coherence, and 10(11) soft x-ray photons within a single pulse. We developed a Michelson type delay pulse generator using a soft x-ray beam splitter to measure the intensity correlation of x-ray speckles from materials and succeeded in generating double coherent x-ray pulses with picosecond delay times. Moreover, we employed a high-speed soft x-ray streak camera for the picosecond time-resolved measurement of x-ray speckles caused by double coherent x-ray pulse illumination. We performed the x-ray speckle intensity correlation measurements for probing the relaxation phenomena of polarizations in polarization clusters in the paraelectric phase of the ferroelectric material BaTiO(3) near its Curie temperature and verified its performance.

Evaluation of fast EUV scintillator using 13.9 nm x-ray laser

The nickel-like silver x-ray laser with the wavelength of 13.9 nm is used as a high power EUV excitation source to evaluate a scintillator for EUV lithography. The time resolved spectrum of zinc oxide exciton emission at around 380 nm was observed. The determined fluorescence lifetime of 1.1 ns is sufficiently short for characterizing EUV lithography light sources having a few nanoseconds duration. It is also shown that the x-ray laser is an excellent tool for spectroscopic characterization of materials intended for next-generation lithography applications.

High-resolution Spectroscopy of the Nickel-like Molybdenum X-ray Laser Toward the Generation of Circularly Polarized X-ray Laser

We attempted the first measurement of the spectral width of the nickel-like molybdenum x-ray laser (

High-precision measurement of the spectral width of the nickel-like molybdenum x-ray laser

{\lambda}\;=\;18.895\;nm

Recent progress on x-ray laser source development and application activities at JAEA

) by use of a high-resolution spectrometer in order to determine the strength of the magnetic field required for the generation of a circularly polarized x-ray laser. The spectral width was measured to be

Recent Advances of the X-Ray Laser Research at APRC

{\Delta}{\lambda}\;=\;18\;m{\AA}