XLR 500i: recirculating ring ArF light source for immersion lithography

D.J. W. Brown; P. O'Keeffe; V. B. Fleurov; R. Rokitski; R. Bergstedt; I. V. Fomenkov; K. O'Brien; N. R. Farrar; W. N. Partlo

doi:10.1117/12.712684

27 March 2007 XLR 500i: recirculating ring ArF light source for immersion lithography

D.J. W. Brown, P. O'Keeffe, V. B. Fleurov, R. Rokitski, R. Bergstedt, I. V. Fomenkov, K. O'Brien, N. R. Farrar, W. N. Partlo

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 6520, Optical Microlithography XX; 652020 (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.712684
Event: SPIE Advanced Lithography, 2007, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

As Argon Fluoride (ArF) lithography moves into high volume production, ArF light sources need to meet performance requirements beyond the traditional drivers of power and bandwidth. The first key requirement is a continuous decrease in Cost of Ownership (CoO) where the industry requirement is for reduction in ArF CoO in line with the historical cost reduction demonstrated for Krypton Fluoride (KrF) light sources. A second requirement is improved light source performance stability. As CD control requirements shrink, following the ITRS roadmap, all process parameters which affect CD variation need tighter control. In the case of the light source, these include improved control of bandwidth, pulse energy stability and wavelength. In particular, CD sensitivity to exposure dose has become a serious challenge for device processing and improvements to laser pulse energy stability can contribute to significantly better dose control. To meet these performance challenges Cymer has designed a new dual chamber laser architecture. The Recirculating Ring design requires 10X less energy from the Master Oscillator (MO). This new configuration enables the MO chamber lifetime to reach that of the power amplifier chamber at around 30Bp. In addition, other optical modules in the system such as the line narrowing module experience lower light intensity, ensuring even longer optics lifetime. Furthermore, the Recirculating Ring configuration operates in much stronger saturation. MO energy instabilities are reduced by a factor of 9X when passed through the Ring. The output energy stability exhibits the characteristics of a fully saturated amplifier and pulse energy stability improvement of 1.5X is realized. This performance enables higher throughput scanner operation with enhanced dose control. The Recirculating Ring technology will be introduced on the XLR 500i, Cymer's fifth-generation dual chamber-based light source built on the production-proven XLA platform. This paper will describe the design details and performance characteristics of the new laser architecture.

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D.J. W. Brown, P. O'Keeffe, V. B. Fleurov, R. Rokitski, R. Bergstedt, I. V. Fomenkov, K. O'Brien, N. R. Farrar, and W. N. Partlo "XLR 500i: recirculating ring ArF light source for immersion lithography", Proc. SPIE 6520, Optical Microlithography XX, 652020 (27 March 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.712684

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