At the Laboratory for Energy Conversion, ETH Zurich a new tin droplet-based laser-produced plasma source with application in EUV lithography is operational since Q3 2013. The EUV source ALPS II is equipped with a large capacity droplet dispenser and a high power (kW), high repetition rate (>6 kHz) Nd:YAG laser. The new source should address the requirements of high volume manufacturing for different inspection and metrology applications found in EUV lithography. The average source brightness is equal to 350 W/mm2sr. Individual droplet tracking in time and space, which is coupled to a droplet positioning and triggering system helps to increase the pulse-to-pulse EUV emission stability of the source. The lateral droplet stability is on the order of 10-15% of the droplet diameter. The individual droplet triggering yields deviations between the laser trigger and the droplet passage time at the irradiation site of less than 1 us, even for large droplet timing fluctuations (>5%). The in-band EUV radiation is measured with an energy monitor, which is coupled to a fast analog hardware-based integrator. The pulse-to-pulse EUV energy stability for high stability data equals 3% (σ). In the case of window-averaged (0.1 s) data, the EUV stability equals 0.86% (σ). Low stability data is also reported. The large brightness of the presented LPP-based light source can be tuned to adjust the EUV light stability that is required by the inspection tool.
The tin droplet generator is a key component of EUV LPP sources. Small tin droplets, when combined with a high power
laser, form a regenerative target with high CE. A major challenge associated with today's EUV sources is energy
stability, which directly correlates with the stability of the fuel delivery system. The LEC droplet dispenser is now in
its 5th generation design, with several years of development, including studies of different nozzle types, excitation
mechanisms, thermal management approaches and contamination control systems. The dispenser produces droplets in
the frequency range required for both metrology and HVM EUV sources. The two relevant instability modes are drop-to-drop
jitter and lateral instabilities. The low frequency content of the lateral droplet displacement is compensated by a
newly implemented dispenser positioning system. The drop-to-drop jitter, which is studied over 2000 s, equals 11.2%
(3σ) of the mean droplet spacing, which makes individual droplet laser triggering necessary. The lateral instabilities,
which are mainly relevant in the plane perpendicular to the laser axis, are determined to be in the range of 7.1% (3σ;) of
the droplet diameter. The lateral displacements are recorded over 2.2 hrs. The related EUV temporal energy stability
(open-loop) is estimated to be 0.35% (3σ) for the worst case scenario, a laser spot size which matches the droplet
diameter.
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