Rolf Apetz

Physical properties of the HCT EUV source

The paper describes the physical properties and recent technical advances of the hollow cathode triggered pinch device (HCT) for the generation of EUV radiation. In previous publications we have demonstrated continuous operation of the untriggered device at 1 kHz in pure Xe. The newer generations operate with a triggering facility which allows a wider parameter space under which stable operation is possible. Repetition frequencies of up to 4 kHz could be demonstrated. Many of the experiments are performed in repetitive bursts of variable lengths and spacing. This allows also to demonstrate that there is only little transient behavior upon switching on and off the source. Conversion efficiencies into the 2 percent frequency band around 13.5 nm are about 0.4 percent in 2p, comparable to the values reported from other groups. Another important parameter is the size of the light emitting region. Here we have studied the influence of electrode geometry and flow properties on the size, to find a best match to the requirements of the collection optics. A major problem for the design of a complete wafer illumination system is the out-of-band portion of the radiation. Especially the DUV fraction of the source spectrum is a concern because it is also reflected to some extend by the Mo-Si multilayer mirrors. We show that the source has a low overall non-EUV part of the emission. In particular, it is demonstrated that there is very little DUV coming out of the usable source volume, well below the specified level.

Frequency scaling in a hollow-cathode-triggered pinch plasma as radiation source in the extreme ultraviolet

The hollow-cathode triggered discharge extreme ultraviolet source is based on the same principle as pseudospark switches. The electrode geometry consists of a planar anode and cathode with central opposing holes, the one on the cathode side being connected to the hollow cathode. Radiation is generated by magnetic compression of the working gas under high-current operation. Essential for the operation is that the pressure and voltage are chosen to be on the left side of the Paschen curve to insure insulation of the gap between the electrodes. However, this insulation of the electrode system needs to be reinstalled after breakdown. Typical recovery times of a xenon-based system are down to 100 /spl mu/s, depending on the electrode geometry. It will be shown that the decay of the electron density in the hollow cathode is the limiting process. Investigation of the recovery mechanism has led to a design that allows operation above 4 kHz which is close to the required frequency for extreme ultraviolet lithography.

Sn DPP source-collector modules: status of alpha resources, beta developments, and the scalability to HVM

For industrial EUV (extreme ultra-violet) lithography applications high power extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light sources are needed at a central wavelength of 13.5 nm, targeting 32 nm node and below. Philips Extreme UV GmbH and XTREME technologies GmbH have developed DPP (Discharge Produced Plasma) Alpha tools which run in operation at several locations in the world. In this paper the status of the Alpha Sn-DPP tools as developed by Philips Extreme UV GmbH will be given. The Alpha DPP tools provide a good basis for the development and engineering of the Beta tools and in the future of the HVM tools. The first Beta source has been designed and first light has been produced. Engineering steps will folow to optimize this first generation Beta Sn-DPP source. HVM tools target EUV power levels from 200W to 500W in IF. In this paper we show that the power requried for HVM can be generated with Sn-DPP sources. Based on Alpha Sn-DPP sources we show that repetition frequency and generated EUV pulse energy is scalable up to power levels that match the HVM requirements.

EUV sources for the alpha-tools

In this paper, we report on the recent progress of the Philips Extreme UV source. The Philips source concept is based on a discharge plasma ignited in a Sn vapor plume that is ablated by a laser pulse. Using rotating electrodes covered with a regenerating tin surface, the problems of electrode erosion and power scaling are fundamentally solved. Most of the work of the past year has been dedicated to develop a lamp system which is operating very reliably and stable under full scanner remote control. Topics addressed were the development of the scanner interface, a dose control system, thermo-mechanical design, positional stability of the source, tin handling, and many more. The resulting EUV source-the Philips NovaTin(R) source-can operate at more than 10kW electrical input power and delivers 200W in-band EUV into 2π continuously. The source is very small, so nearly 100% of the EUV radiation can be collected within etendue limits. The lamp system is fully automated and can operate unattended under full scanner remote control. 500 Million shots of continuous operation without interruption have been realized, electrode lifetime is at least 2 Billion shots. Three sources are currently being prepared, two of them will be integrated into the first EUV Alpha Demonstration tools of ASML. The debris problem was reduced to a level which is well acceptable for scanner operation. First, a considerable reduction of the Sn emission of the source has been realized. The debris mitigation system is based on a two-step concept using a foil trap based stage and a chemical cleaning stage. Both steps were improved considerably. A collector lifetime of 1 Billion shots is achieved, after this operating time a cleaning would be applied. The cleaning step has been verified to work with tolerable Sn residues. From the experimental results, a total collector lifetime of more than 10 Billion shots can be expected.

Laser-produced plasma versus laser-assisted discharge plasma: physics and technology of extreme ultraviolet lithography light sources

Powerful extreme ultraviolet (EUV) sources at 13.5 nm are a prerequisite for the economical operation of lithography scanners for semi-conductor manufacturing. These sources have been under development for more than 10 years. At the beginning, many source concepts were considered. Compact technologies like dense plasma focus or capillary Z-pinch discharges reached very rapidly fundamental limits as far as power scalability and lifetime were concerned. Other complex technologies-like synchrotrons-eventually dropped out of the race as well, exceeding by far the footprint and cost targets. Over time, the technology solidified toward the two source concepts: on one hand, the discharge produced plasmas (DPP), which eventually led to the development of the current laser-assisted discharge plasma (LDP); on the other hand, the laser-produced plasmas (LPP). All these technologies generate hot and dense plasmas of similar properties, which emit EUV radiations efficiently as a black body radiator or Planck emitter, in a pulsed manner. The plasma generation method, however, is quite different. DPP uses a pulsed high-voltage current discharge to generate plasma heating a gaseous or vaporized material up to temperatures close to 200,000°C. As for LPP, microscopic droplets of molten tin are fired through a vacuum chamber, individually tracked, vaporized by a pre-pulse laser, and eventually irradiated by a pulsed high-power infrared CO2 laser at 50 to 100 kHz, creating a high-temperature tin plasma, which radiates EUV light. In the case of LDP the plasma is generated between two rotating discs. Partially immersed in baths filled with liquid tin, the discs are wetted and covered with a thin layer of liquid tin. A pulsed laser beam focused on one of the discs evaporates a small amount of tin and generates a tin cloud between the two discs. Next a capacitor bank, which is connected to the discs via the liquid tin, discharges and converts the tin cloud into a plasma heated up to 200,000°C as well.

Tin DPP source collector module (SoCoMo) ready for integration into Beta scanner

As the traditional techniques used in optical photolithography at 193 nm are running out of steam and are becoming prohibitively expensive, a new cost-effective, high power EUV (extreme ultra-violet) light source is needed to enable high volume manufacturing (HVM) of ever shrinking semiconductor devices. XTREME technologies GmbH and EUVA have jointly developed tin based LDP (Laser assisted Discharge Plasma) source systems during the last two years for the integration of such sources into scanners of the latest and future generations. The goals of the consortium are 1) to solve the wavelength gap - the growing gap between the printed critical dimensions (CD) driven by Moores Law and the printing capability of lithographic exposure tools constrained by the wavelength of the light source - and 2) to enable the timely availability of EUV light sources for high volume manufacturing. A first Beta EUV Source Collector Module (SoCoMo) containing a tin based laser assisted discharge plasma source is in operation at XTREME technologies since September 2009. Alongside the power increase, the main focus of work emphasizes on the improvement of uptime and reliability of the system leveraging years of experience with the Alpha sources. Over the past period, a cumulated EUV dose of several hundreds of Mega Joules of EUV light has been generated at the intermediate focus, capable to expose more than a hundred thousand wafers with the right dose stability to create well-yielding transistors. During the last months, the entire system achieved an uptime - calculated according to the SEMI standards - of up to 80 %. This new SoCoMo has been successfully integrated and tested with a pre-production scanner and is now ready for first wafer exposures at a customers site. In this paper we will emphasize what our innovative concept is against old type of Xe DPP and we will present the recent status of this system like power level, uptime and lifetime of components as well. In the second part of the paper the EUV source developments for the HVM phase are described. The basic engineering challenges are thermal scaling of the source and debris mitigation. Feasibility of the performance can be demonstrated by experimental results after the implementation into the beta system. The feasibility of further efficiency improvement, required for the HVM phase, will also be shown. The objectives of the HVM roadmap will be achieved through evolutionary steps from the current Beta products.

Status of Philips' extreme UV source

The paper describes progress of the Philips’ hollow cathode triggered (HCT) gas discharge EUV source. The program has been focussed on three major areas: (1) Studying the basic physics of ignition, pinch formation and EUV generation. The paper reports on progress in this area and particularly describes the underlying atomic physics both for Xe and Sn. (2) Discharge based on Sn. Results on overall efficiency more than 5 times the Xe efficiency are reported as well as high frequency operation up to 6.5 kHz. This system shows all the necessary ingredients for scaling to production power levels. (3) Integration of the Xe source in an alpha tool. Results on integration issues like electrode life time, collector life time and dose control will be presented.

VCSEL arrays expanding the range of high-power laser systems and applications

Thermal treatment may be by far the most frequent process used in manufacturing, but only at a few places lasers could make an inroad. For thermal treatment homogeneous illumination of large areas at a lower brightness, and accurate temporal as well as spatial control of the power is required. This is complicated for conventional high-power lasers, while VCSEL arrays inherently have these capabilities.Because of their fast switching capability and low power dissipation, vertical-cavity surface emitting laser-diodes (VCSELs) have been widely used for datacom and sensing applications. By forming large-area arrays with hundreds of VCSELs per mm2, their use can be further expanded to high-power applications. In this way power densities of several W/mm2 are achieved, making VCEL arrays an ideal solution for many heating applications, ranging from melting and welding of plastics and laminates to curing, drying and sintering of coatings.A turn-key system concept has been developed allowing fast and easy configuring systems to the specifications of the applications. The compact and robust system can be built directly into the manufacturing equipment, thus making expensive fibers and homogenizing optics superfluous. These systems are now finding their first inroads into industrial applications and have been designed-in into commercially available production machines.Thermal treatment may be by far the most frequent process used in manufacturing, but only at a few places lasers could make an inroad. For thermal treatment homogeneous illumination of large areas at a lower brightness, and accurate temporal as well as spatial control of the power is required. This is complicated for conventional high-power lasers, while VCSEL arrays inherently have these capabilities.Because of their fast switching capability and low power dissipation, vertical-cavity surface emitting laser-diodes (VCSELs) have been widely used for datacom and sensing applications. By forming large-area arrays with hundreds of VCSELs per mm2, their use can be further expanded to high-power applications. In this way power densities of several W/mm2 are achieved, making VCEL arrays an ideal solution for many heating applications, ranging from melting and welding of plastics and laminates to curing, drying and sintering of coatings.A turn-key system concept has been developed allowing fast and easy configur...

Making extreme-UV light sources a reality

To sustain this century’s information and communication revolution, optical lithography—the core technology that allows the printing of ever more powerful, smaller, and faster electronics— will have to continue to deliver productivity gains at the pace described by Moore’s law. However, the economic viability of nextgeneration optical lithography (extreme-UV, or EUV) in a highvolume manufacturing environment will require appropriate exposure tools (‘scanners’) to achieve high-throughput and highyield operation. Consequently, EUV light sources must be able not only to generate and deliver powerful, stable, and ‘clean’ EUV photons at 13.5nm (see Table 1) but also to do so consistently and reliably. Many ideas for EUV sources have been explored over the years.1 The technology now centers on two concepts: laserproduced plasma—LPP (see Figure 1, left)—and laser-enableddischarge-produced plasma: LDP (see Figure 1, right). Though each of these approaches generates hot, dense plasmas (at temperatures close to 200,000C) and emits EUV radiation efficiently as a black body (i.e., at all frequencies), how they do it differs greatly.2 In the case of LPP,3 microscopic droplets (diameter 20 m) of molten tin at a temperature in excess of 232C are fired through a vacuum chamber, individually tracked, vaporized by a pre-pulse laser, and eventually irradiated by a pulsed highpower IR CO2 laser at 50–100kHz. When the highly excited electrons relax to lower energy levels, the tin plasma generated radiates EUV photons. Though seemingly simple, the LPP concept is, unfortunately, inherently unstable due to the discrete nature of tin delivery and the challenge of spatially synchronizing and focusing (from some 50m away) the laser beam on the microscopic droplets. CO2 laser instabilities coupled with droplet instabilities further Table 1. A step further in complexity compared with prior light sources for lithographic applications (i-line lamps, deep-UV lasers), extremeUV (EUV) light sources require efficient integration of six major engineering solutions. IF: Intermediate focus.

Vertical-cavity surface emitting laser-diodes arrays expanding the range of high-power laser systems and applications

Thermal treatment may be by far the most frequent process used in manufacturing, but only at a few places lasers could make an inroad. For thermal treatment, homogeneous illumination of large areas at a lower brightness, and accurate temporal as well as spatial control of the power is required. This is complicated for conventional high-power lasers, while vertical-cavity surface emitting laser-diode (VCSEL) arrays inherently have these capabilities. Because of their fast switching capability and low power dissipation, VCSELs have been widely used for datacom and sensing applications. By forming large-area arrays with hundreds of VCSELs per mm2, their use can be further expanded to high-power applications. In this way, power densities of several W/mm2 are achieved, making the VCEL arrays an ideal solution for many heating applications, ranging from melting and welding of plastics and laminates to curing, drying, and sintering of coatings. A turn-key system concept has been developed allowing fast and easy ...