In extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, development of review tools for EUV mask pattern and phase defect at working wavelength of 13.5 nm is required. The EUV mask is composed of an absorber pattern (50 – 70 nm thick) and Mo/Si multilayer (280 nm thick) on a glass substrate. This mask pattern seems three-dimensional (3D) structure. This 3D structure would modulate EUV reflection phase, which would cause focus and pattern shifts. Thus, EUV phase imaging is important to evaluate this phase modulation. We have developed coherent EUV scatterometry microscope (CSM), which is a simple microscope without objective optics. EUV phase and intensity image are reconstructed with diffraction images by ptychography with coherent EUV illumination. The high-harmonic-generation (HHG) EUV source was employed for standalone CSM system. In this study, we updated HHG system of pump-laser reduction and gas-pressure control. Two types of EUV mask absorber patterns were observed. An 88-nm lines-and-spaces and a cross-line patterns were clearly reconstructed by ptychography. In addition, a natural defect with 2-μm diameter on the cross-line was well reconstructed. This demonstrated the high capability of the standalone CSM, which system will be used in the factories, such as mask shops and semiconductor fabrication plants.
In extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, the three-dimensional (3D) structure of the EUV mask, which has an absorber layer and a Mo/Si multilayer on a glass substrate, strongly affects the EUV phase. EUV actinic metrology is required to evaluate the feature of defect printability and the critical dimension (CD) value. The 3D structure modulates the EUV phase, causing the pattern position and focus shift. A microscope that observes in phase contrast necessary. We have developed a coherent EUV scatterometry microscope (CSM) for observing EUV patterns with quantitative phase contrast. The exposure light is coherent EUV light. For the industrial use, we have developed a laboratory coherent source of high-harmonic-generation (HHG) EUV light. High harmonics is pumped by a scale of a Ti:Sapphire laser. In the previous study, a very long exposure time of 1000 s was necessary to detect We upgraded the relay optics. The detection performance of an absorber defect using the new relay optics is We observed the line-end oversize defect and the oversize defect in the 112 nm hole pattern and 180 nm hole pattern. The upgraded system has a detection size limit of a line-end 24-nm-oversize defect with 10 s exposure time, which is 2,688 nm2 (52 × 52 nm2) absorber defect. This result shows high performance capability of HHG-CSM for detecting small defect.
We have developed the standalone, coherent scatterometry microscope (CSM) for the inspection of extreme ultraviolet
(EUV) lithography mask. The low divergence, coherent high-order harmonic (HH) was generated as coherent light
source for CSM at a wavelength of 13.5 nm using a commercial laser system. The HH enable us to obtain the high
contrast diffraction image from the mask. The diffraction light from the 2-nm wide line-defect and tens-nm size
point-defects in the mask has been observed successfully with the system.
In extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, controlling the reflection phase of the mask pattern is important for enlarging
the process window and for compensating for phase defects. And, there are shadowing effect owing to the oblique
illumination which modifies reflection phase of absorber patterns. A phase imaging microscope is required to determine
this actinic phase distribution. To this end, we have developed a coherent EUV scatterometry microscope (CSM) based
on coherent diffraction imaging (CDI). The CSM consists of a coherent EUV source and a charge-coupled device (CCD)
camera, which records the diffraction images from the mask pattern directly. The system is lensless and makes use of the
inverse computations based on the intensity of the scattered radiation, instead of the image-forming optics, to retrieve the
frequency-space phase data. This allows the aerial-image phase data to also be reconstructed. Using the CSM system,
one can obtain the intensity and phase images of the sample pattern. In this study, we also reconstructed the phase images
of line-and-space patterns that were free of the shadowing effect as well as of patterns in which shadowing occurred. In
the case of the latter, shadowing could be observed clearly in the phase image. Finally, the phase image of a programmed
phase defect was also reconstructed and its phase value evaluated quantitatively. Thus, the CSM system is powerful tool
for developing phase-controlled masks.
For extreme ultraviolet (EUV) mask evaluation, we have developed the coherent EUV scatterometry microscope (CSM),
which is equipped with a laboratory coherent EUV source for high-harmonic generation (HHG) and acts as a standalone
EUV tool. The CSM records the diffraction from mask patterns directly with a charge-coupled-device (CCD) camera,
which was illuminated with the coherent EUV light. The pattern image and the critical dimension values are evaluated by
using the diffraction image with iterative calculations based on coherent diffraction imaging. The 59th high-order
harmonic generation at a wavelength of 13.5 nm was pumped by a tabletop 6 mJ, 32 fs, Ti:sapphire laser system. EUV
output energy of 1 μW was successfully achieved. We observed the EUV mask using the HHG-CSM system. A very
small 2 nm-wide line defect was successfully detected while located in an 88 nm line-and-space pattern.
For actinic mask inspection and metrology, we have developed a coherent EUV scatterometry microscope (CSM) at
NewSUBARU of a synchrotron radiation facility. The CSM is composed of φ5-mm pinhole, turning and focusing
multilayer mirrors, a test EUV mask and a back-illuminated CCD camera. Thus this system is lens-less system, records
diffraction EUV light from a mask pattern, which is exposed with coherent EUV light. The CSM inspects defect on the
EUV mask by the coherent-diffraction-imaging method. Aerial images of periodic and aperiodic patterns on the EUV
mask were well reconstructed by the iterative calculation. Since the CSM data include only the diffraction intensity, the
missing phase information is reconstructed. A defect with 10-nm width was well inspected.
The CSM also evaluates critical dimension (CD) of the mask patterns by diffraction intensities. The mask is illuminated
with six-degree angle of the incidence, which equals to the EUV lithography scanners. The test EUV mask of 6025 glass
substrate has line-and-space (L/S) patterns of 22-nm nodes. Absorber thickness is about 70 nm. The CSM result is well
corresponding with the CD-SEM result at whole mask area. And, high repeatability of 0.3 nm (3φ) is achieved.
We demonstrate single-shot measurement of the fringe visibility of 13-nm high-order harmonic beam in a Young's double slit experiment. The fringe visibility of 0.95 was obtained for 13-nm harmonics with optimal phase-matching condition. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of the fringe visibility measurement of the 13-nm harmonic beam with a single-shot. This result shows that the 13-nm harmonic beam is highly spatial-coherent light source and useful for applications in imaging and microscopy.
We demonstrated the generation of highly-coherent high-order harmonics and their energy scaling in the soft x-ray region using 30-fs Ti:sapphire laser pulses. By adjusting the gas density and the pump laser focusing, an output energy as high as 0.5 (mu) J was achieved with good spatial beam quality having a beam divergence of 2 mrad at the 27th harmonic (30 nm).
We propose a Ni-like Kr soft x-ray laser operating on the 4d1S0 - 4p1P1 transition at 32.8 nm by a novel excitation scheme in which optical field ionization prepares Ni-like Kr ion with almost 100% abundance and inverse bremsstrahlung heats the plasma efficiently. The numerical calculation based on the hot-spot model predicts that ultra-high gains greater than 1000 cm-1 in the low density plasma (Ne equals 5.6 X 1019 cm-3) for a driving laser intensity of 1.75 X 1016 W/cm2. With a longitudinally pumping, output energy greater than 1 (mu) J and an energy efficiency of approximately 10-5 are expected with 200-torr Kr gas.
Intense, subpicosecond KrF laser pulses were focused into a boron nitride plasma containing boron atom clusters. Strong soft-x-ray spectra observed suggest the production of the fully stripped boron ions with the focused laser intensity of 8 X 1016 W/cm2. Time history of the Lyman-(alpha) emission (4.8 nm) indicates the production of a cold plasma with H-like B ions within tens of ps after the irradiation of the subpicosecond KrF laser pulse.
Soft x-ray amplification by optical-field-induced ionization (OFI) of a preformed plasma is investigated. Experimental and numerical results ensure that we have produced a plasma with a significantly lower electron temperature than what is expected by an above-threshold ionization model. In order to explain the results, a two-component plasma model in which relatively high temperature electrons are produced by OFI in a cold electron bath of the preformed plasma is presented. The model indicates that the average electron temperature of the OFI plasma rapidly decreases since a high-temperature part of the electrons escapes from the focal volume without interaction. The initial electrons produced prior to the field ionization which survive after the OFI also significantly contribute to the rapid three-body recombination. Based on the ionization-induced refractive-index change, the pulse propagation of a high-intensity pump laser during the OFI is also discussed.
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