Breakthrough in the EUVL

EUV technology has focused on Laser Produced Plasma (LPP) or Discharge Produced Plasma (DPP) radiation sources. In both LPP and DPP, the mirror responsible for collecting the light is directly exposed to the plasma and is therefore vulnerable to damage from the high-energy ions and other debris.

The important achievements of NANO-UV's scientists and engineers are the combination of these two costly components into one functional unit: intrinsic Source Collector Module (i-SoCoMo™). Typically 20 MW of electrical power is delivered into a plasma, which produces an intense burst of EUV photons. Concurrently, an intrinsic plasma structure, the indestructible PlasmaLens™, is created to collect the photons and deliver them to the right point.

Specific features of the i-SoCoMo™

  • Small footprint. 45 cm long and 14 cm wide
  • PlasmaLens™ for photon collection. Low cost and indestructible
  • Exceptional brightness. 1x1016 EUV photons/cm2/s*
  • Unprecedented source power. 8000 W/2π sr
  • Near-zero debris at IF

(*) Irradiance (13.5 nm, 4% BW) 67 cm from the source

The multiplexing concept

Source power output is an important factor for EUVL HVM. Today however, the power output of commercially available sources is insufficient to what is needed by the semi-conductor manufacturing industry. While our single source is much brighter than competitive LPP and DPP, it does not have the overall power needed to expose the resist. However, the modularity and compact design of our i-SoCoMoTM units enables us to put many of these together, to get the right power output needed for HVM.

The sources are operated in parallel in a multiplexed fashion. This increases source uniformity by improving the effective repetition rate. This solution provides high power at the intermediate focus (IF) with a 100 units multiplexed source, the HYDRA-100.

More importantly, the strength of the NANO-UV's multiplexed plasma source lies in its ability to operate even when one source fails, with only a small perturbation on the total output. This can be compensated by increasing the operating voltage of the remaining sources, unlike the failure of a single source, which brings the whole production to a halt. The HYDRA approach offers many operational advantages.

Multiplexed Power for EUVL HVM

Thanks to its revolutionary PlasmaLens™ technology, NANO-UV's source sets new standards for design and simplicity. This means absolute reliability in a physical package many times smaller than previous generation solutions. Thanks to those dimensions, modular multiplexing of many of sources is now possible.

These breakthrough technologies have enormous positive implications for EUVL HVM and metrology:

  • High power and high brightness with no external collector
  • Debris Reduction (essentially, debris elimination)
  • Reliability, minimized downtime
  • Process Reproducibility
  • Low Cost of Ownership