In this study, we have made a breathable frame (outer sizes: 151mm x 119mm, frame width: 4mm, and frame height: 1.3mm) which has the mounting space for filters and the ventilation path inside of the frame. The breathable frame is composed of stacked layers of stainless thin plates with cutouts/openings. The breathable frame has a HEPA filter with filtration area of 600mm2 inside. For a closed pellicle which consists of the breathable frame and p-Si pellicle membrane, time required for intake to 101kPa from 1Pa with keeping the deflection of p-Si pellicle membrane to 0.5mm was calculated at 165sec. It seems that the developed breathable frame has the useful ventilation performance. Furthermore, because special processing for ventilation, such as formation of a ventilation path is not required on the pellicle membrane, it is expected that the closed pellicle can be made easily by combining the existing pellicle membrane with the breathable frame.
In this study, we fabricated a closed type EUV pellicle without any gaps by using the mask adhesive, forming the vent holes in the Si border part and putting the sufficiently wide area filters on the top side of Si border. Ventilation performance of closed EUV pellicle was examined during pumping and ventilation condition. As the result, we found that the closed EUV pellicle has enough ventilation performance under the practical pumping down condition. Furthermore, as for EUV pellicle, contamination growth on mask surface during EUV exposure should be suppressed. We fabricated EUV pellicle with coated adhesive as the mask adhesive to suppress the outgas generation which causes the contamination on mask during EUV exposure. EUV irradiation was performed to the base plate which has similar component of the EUV mask surface inside the pellicle space. Contamination growth was not observed for the sample with coated adhesive, but observed for the sample with general adhesive as mask adhesive. Coated adhesives for mask adhesive of EUV pellicle, which keep the adhesive properties, will be suitable for fixing method to suppress the mask contamination during EUV exposure.
In the existing DUV pellicle, haze generation risk on mask surface during DUV exposure exists due to the reaction of out gas in an exposure atmosphere. It is well known fact that outgas is generated not only from pellicle in itself but also by stray light being irradiated adhesive parts. As for EUV pellicle, problems of the exposure defect such as haze generation and reflectance reduction of mask will be anticipated because EUV has higher photon energy compared with DUV and diffusion of the outgas is promoted in high vacuum condition. In this study, similar to the pelliclized EUV mask structure was constructed by using the full-size EUV pellicle frame stacked on a base plate which has similar component of the EUV mask surface, and dummy plate placed on the membrane side of the frame. Contamination growth behavior was examined by irradiating the EUV light to the base plate inside pellicle via EUV transparent membrane on dummy plate. Adhesion of the contamination on base plate was observed in EUV irradiation area in the case of the pellicle sample using commercially available adhesive as the mask adhesive. So, general commercially available adhesives will not be suitable for mask adhesive of pellicle. We found that generation of the contamination was not observed for pellicle sample with coated adhesive materials as the mask adhesive, which has both outgas suppressing and EUV light screening function. Coated adhesives for mask adhesive of pellicle, which keep the adhesive properties, will be suitable for fixing method to suppress the contamination growth during EUV exposure.
As for the EUV pellicle, closed pellicle structure with the filters which has fundamentally no penetration path of particles
is needed to keep the clean reliability level of photomask equivalent to the current photolithography. We proposed a
novel closed EUV pellicle equipped with filters which has not only the particle intrusion prevention but also the
ventilation performance. Full-size closed EUV pellicle was fabricated by forming the vent holes in the Si border part and
putting the wide filters on the top side of Si border. As the result, we experimentally confirmed the suppression of the
membrane deflection under the practical pumping down condition.
In order to overcome catastrophic optical damage, decoupled confinement heterostructure (DCH) featuring a broadened waveguide and thin carrier block layers have been developed. Due to decoupling of carrier and optical confinement, a DCH laser can be designed more flexibly than a conventional separated confinement heterostructure laser, i.e., laser diodes can be designed with a variety of gain coupling factor (Gamma) (perpendicular), quantum-well number NW, keeping the beam divergence angle constant.
High power InGaAs/AlGaAs laser diodes with decoupled confinement heterostructure (DCH) have been developed. Almost Al-free waveguide and cladding layers were realized in 980 nm DCH laser diodes without degrading temperature characteristics. The extremely low electrical and thermal resistances allowed high power and efficient operation. The maximum CW output power as high as 9.5 W was obtained with 100-micrometer-aperture broad area. DCH laser diode. The maximum efficiency was 55% at 2.5 W. The series resistance of 1.8-mm long cavity was 0.04(Omega) and internal loss was 1.5 cm-1. The characteristic temperature (T0) was 155 K. The substantially Al-free DCH structure enables easy fabrication of various index guided laser diodes. We have developed two types of real index guided laser diodes, buried- ridge and self-aligned structure. Buried-ridge laser diode presented 1.3 W maximum CW output power and 500 mW single mode operation. Self-aligned structure laser diodes showed 1.4 W CW output power and 700 mW single mode operation with better reproducibility.
High Power GaAs/AlGaAs laser diodes with a decoupled confinement heterostructure (DCH) have been developed. This novel structure features broadened waveguide layers and thin carrier block layers sandwiching an active layer. Catastrophic optical damage (COD) level was twice as high as the corresponding separated confinement heterostructure (SCH) laser diode due to the improvement of mode profiles. Al- content of cladding layers is greatly reduced in DCH laser diode without degrading temperature characteristics. The decrease of electrical and thermal resistivities allows high- power and high-efficiency operation. CW output, 4.6 W was obtained with a 50 micrometer-aperture 809 nm DCH laser diode. The maximum efficiency was 49% at 2.8 W. Life test was carried out over 2,000 hours under the conditions of 1.0 W - 50 degrees Celsius. The median life was estimated to be more then ten thousand hours at this condition. Decoupled confinement heterostructure is advantageous for the fabrication of the index guided structure, since the reduction of chemically active Al-composition relieves the process difficulties related to the chemical etching and the selective re-growth. Index guided laser diode with a buried ridge structure presented 400 mW single mode operation at 860 nm. The life test was carried out under the conditions of 300 mW - 50 degrees Celsius. All the 25 devices showed no failure up to 7,000 hours.
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