Laser produced plasma sources for nanolithography—Recent integrated simulation and benchmarking
- 1 May 2013
- journal article
- research article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Physics of Plasmas
- Vol. 20 (5), 053105
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4807379
Abstract
Photon sources for extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) are still facing challenging problems to achieve high volume manufacturing in the semiconductor industry. The requirements for high EUV power, longer optical system and components lifetime, and efficient mechanisms for target delivery have narrowed investigators towards the development and optimization of dual-pulse laser sources with high repetition rate of small liquid tin droplets and the use of multi-layer mirror optical system for collecting EUV photons. We comprehensively simulated laser-produced plasma sources in full 3D configuration using 10–50 μm tin droplet targets as single droplets as well as, for the first time, distributed fragmented microdroplets with equivalent mass. The latter is to examine the effects of droplet fragmentation resulting from the first pulse and prior to the incident second main laser pulse. We studied the dependence of target mass and size, laser parameters, and dual pulse system configuration on EUV radiation output and on atomic and ionic debris generation. Our modeling and simulation included all phases of laser target evolution: from laser/droplet interaction, energy deposition, target vaporization, ionization, plasma hydrodynamic expansion, thermal and radiation energy redistribution, and EUV photons collection as well as detail mapping of photons source size and location. We also simulated and predicted the potential damage to the optical mirror collection system from plasma thermal and energetic debris and the requirements for mitigating systems to reduce debris fluence. The debris effect on mirror collection system is analyzed using our three-dimensional ITMC-DYN Monte Carlo package. Modeling results were benchmarked against our CMUXE laboratory experimental studies for the EUV photons production and for debris and ions generation.Keywords
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