Target fabrication of low-density and nanoporous materials to generate extreme ultraviolet (EUV)

Abstract

Our institute has been investigating laser-produced tin, lithium and xenon plasma for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source of EUV lithography system, and found the highest conversion efficiency of 3% at 13.5 nm in 2% bandwidth. In the present paper, we introduce fabrication methods of density-controlled tin targets to generate relatively monochromatic EUV, and higher conversion efficiency than bulk tin. The first method is the nano-template method, where liquid tin solution was immersed into a polymer film with monodispersed size nanoparticle. The density can be controlled by tin concentration of the solution. The target can be classified into mass-limited target. We have shown a tendency of monochromatic EUV emission around 13.5 nm with decreasing of tin density. The intensity was higher than tin foil with bulk density. The tendency has a merit to mitigate heat effect of the first EUV mirror. The fabrication method has another merit to control not only density but also the poresize of tin oxide to be 100 nm ∼ 10 μm. The second is liquid crystalline template method to obtain porous tin oxide. The precursor with tin oxide and cellulose provides mechanically stable and transparent film. The film has wavy sub-microstructure derived from microscopic liquid crystal domain structure. The method is simple and short duration for the hydrolysis reaction to solidify tin compound. This material has a merit of feasibility of fabrication, and has been applied for rotation target for 10 Hz and 5 kHz laser repetition.