Extreme ultraviolet and out-of-band radiation emission from a tin droplet based LPP source

Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL) is a leading candidate for the future development of smaller and faster microchips with feature sizes of 32 nm or less. Tin laser-produced plasmas (LPPs) are one of the most promising sources of in-band radiation for EUV lithography and inspection applications. However, ions emitted from these LPPs may cause significant damage to components, specifically the collector optics. Tin-droplet targets have the ability to supply the minimum mass required to generate the EUV radiation, leading to substantial decrease in the amount of generated debris. Absolute intensity measurements of the EUV radiation formed using a droplet target, have been recorded. Measurements were recorded over 2 pi steradian with respect to the plasma. The droplet generator, a fully in-house developed system, was synchronized with a Nd:YAG laser operating at a frequency of 5 kHz. The laser pulse was focused to a power density of approximately 10(11) W/cm(2) to maximize in-band emission. EUV measurements were recorded at the Intermediate Focus of the High Brightness Source of the Laboratory for Energy Conversion. To complement the EUV measurements, out-of-band measurements were simultaneously recorded with a calibrated spectrometer from 300 to 1000 nm.