Development of capillary Z-pinch discharge EUV light source

Extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is most promising technology for 50 nm technology node which will be used from around the year 2007. There are many issues for realizing EUV lithography, such as developing optical components and radiation sources and one of the most important challenging tasks is to develop an EUV light source. Various technical concepts for realizing high power sources for EUV lithography are under investigation worldwide. Laser produced plasmas (LPP) and discharge produced plasmas (DPP) are the most promising schemes. In general, DPP methods are of special interest, because their prospected costs for the demanded throughput is expected to be much lower than those of LPPs. However, the discharge plasmas are of high risk, because many crucial problems have to be solved before reaching the required power levels. In this work, a high repetitive, compact and low-debris Xe-filled capillary Z-pinch discharge system has been designed and fabricated as an EUV source. We devised an electrode configuration compatible with the system and applied a magnetic switch and a static induction (SI) thyristor stack as a main switch of power modulator.