As major milestone of commissioning phase of beam transport section for the 10 PetaWatts beamlines of Extreme Light Infrastructure Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) located in Magurele (Romania), we have propagated the beam throughout the beam transport section and measured its energy as well as its pulse duration after compression at full energy and full aperture. 10 consecutive laser pulses have been shot at a repetition rate of 1 shot per minute with compressed pulse energy ranging between 241 and 246 Joules while pulse duration has been measured at 23 fs leading to the first ever operation above 10 PetaWatts peak power
We report a full experimental comparison study on the injection of a Ti:Sa multi-TW amplifier chain with a standard 15 fs Ti:Sa oscillator and a 35 fs frequency doubled fiber oscillator. The study highlights that the Ti:Sa oscillator with high performances in term of pulse duration and spectral width can be replaced by the frequency doubled fiber oscillator to seed Ti:Sa amplifier chains without almost any compromise on the output pulse duration and the picosecond contrast. Finally, we demonstrate for the first time of our knowledge a 30 TW and 33 fs Ti:Sa amplifier injected by a fiber oscillator.
We present a high energy UV, 308 nm Xenon-Chloride excimer laser system providing a precisely controlled ultra-fast (nanosecond scale) thermal processing of semiconductor devices. The main elements of the system are described and key performance indicators are presented.
Increasing productivity demands on leading-edge scanners require greatly improved light source availability. This
translates directly to minimizing downtime and maximizing productive time, as defined in the SEMI E10 standard.
Focused efforts to achieve these goals are ongoing and Cymer has demonstrated significant improvements on production
light sources.
This paper describes significant availability improvements of Cymer light sources enabled by a new advanced gas
management scheme called Gas Lifetime eXtensioTM (GLTM) control system. Using GLX, we have demonstrated the
capability of extending the pulse-based interval between full gas replenishments to 1 billion pulses on our XLA light
sources, as well as significant extension in the time-based interval between refills. This represents a factor of 10X
increase in the maximum interval between full gas replenishments, which equates to potential gain of up to 2% in
productive time over a year for systems operating at high utilization.
In this paper, we provide performance data on extended (1 billion pulse) laser operation without full gas replenishment
under multiple actual practical production environments demonstrating the ability to achieve long gas lives with very
stable optical performance from the laser system. In particular, we have demonstrated that GLX can provide excellent
stability in key optical performance parameters, such as bandwidth, over extended gas lives. Further, these stability
benefits can be realized under both high and low pulse accumulation scenarios.
In addition, we briefly discuss the potential for future gas management enhancements that will provide even longer term
system performance stability and corresponding reductions in tool downtime.
Since the introduction of the XLA-100 in January 2003, we have built, tested, and shipped a large number of XLA-100 MOPA lasers to microlithography scanner manufacturers. Some systems have already been installed at chip fabrication lines. To ensure product design robustness, we have been performing a long-term system performance test of an XLA-100 laser at Cymer. In this paper, we will report optical performance of the XLA-100 we see during manufacturing final tests, and a summary of the long term testing.
Since the announcement in March 2002 of plans to develop an advanced light source to meet the future spectral power and cost requirements of photolithography, we have made significant progress in the development and productization of the core technology for an ultra line-narrowed, excimer light source based on a master oscillator-power amplifier (MOPA) approach. In this paper, we will focus on the architecture and performance of the first generation of production-ready, MOPA-based ArF light sources developed at Cymer, Inc. This first generation of MOPA-based ArF light sources is referred to as the XLA 100 product series.
Exposure tools for 193nm lithography are expected to use Argon-Fluoride lasers at repetition rates of at least 2kHz. We are showing that, by revisiting several key technologies, the performance and reliability of ArF lasers at 2 kHz are trending towards a level comparable to KrF lasers.
We report the performance of a very high repetition rate ArF laser optimized for next generation, high NA, high throughput scanner. The laser's repetition rate exceeds 4kHz, at 5mJ, and at bandwidths of less than 1.2 pm. We discuss the complexity of high power operation, and make some estimates about the robustness of this technology. In particular, we discuss the risks of scaling to this high repetition rate, and prospects of exceeding 4kHz to near 6kHz with 95 percent bandwidths of less than 1pm.
Today, commercial line-narrowed ArF lasers for Deep-UV lithography are typically producing spectral bandwidth of 0.6 pm FWHM. This value forces the stepper/scanner manufacturers to use large amount of CaF2 in the lens design as well as fused silica in order to compensate for chromatic aberrations. We describe in this paper the parameters - such as pulse duration, fluorine concentration and divergence - which influence the line-narrowing efficiency of ArF laser. We are also presenting result obtained using a new optical cavity design using an etalon as output coupler that provides bandwidth of 0.3 pm at FWHM and 0.8 pm for 95 percent of the energy, performance that could allow to greatly reduce the need for CaF2.
A 500 W, corona photo triggered XeCl laser has been upgraded up to 1100 W by increasing its input energy. Discharge efficiency in excess of 4% has been demonstrated. The maximum average power was obtained at 440 Hz repetition rate.
We have developed high repetition rate, high average power excimer lasers intended for industrial applications. They operate in the phototriggered mode and have a compact design. The first prototype has been proven to operate continuously up to 700 Hz and delivers more than 500 W average power. A second prototype is intended to work at the same repetition rate. It delivers up to 2 J output energy at low repetition rate.
We have developed a high repetition rate, high average power excimer laser intended for industrial applications. The system operates in the phototriggered mode and is capable of continuous operation at repetition rates up to 700 Hz. A compact closed loop gas recirculation system, driven by two centrifugal blowers is employed, providing gas flow velocities up to 35 m/s. The laser delivers a maximum average output power of more than 500 W at 308 nm wavelength.
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