High-power extreme ultraviolet source based on gas jets

The authors report on the development of a high power laser plasma Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) source for Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography. The source is based on the plasma emission of a recycled jet beam of large Xe clusters and produces no particulate debris. The source will be driven by a pulsed laser delivering 1,500 W of focused average power to the cluster jet target. To develop condensers and to optimize source performance, a low power laboratory cluster jet prototype has been used to study the spectroscopy, angular distributions, and EUV source images of the cluster jet plasma emission. In addition, methods to improve the reflectance lifetimes of nearby plasma facing condenser mirrors have been developed. The resulting source yields EUV conversion efficiencies up to 3.8% and mirror lifetimes of 10{sup 9} plasma pulses