Development of soft x-ray laser irradiation beamline for ablation and damage study

The interactions of short pulse lasers with matter are interesting subjects not only in applications such as surface fabrication but also in physical phenomena for study. Optical short pulse lasers have abilities to occur the ablation phenomena accompanying the creation of high temperature, high pressure, and excited states of electrons. The picosecond soft x-ray laser (SXRL) pulse also has ability to occur the ablation. The SXRL having the wavelength of 13.9 nm and duration of 7 ps is one of attractive x-ray source for ablation study, because the ablation threshold obtained with the focused SXRL pulse is much smaller than those obtained with other lasers having longer durations and/or longer wavelengths. The low ablation threshold of a material for the SXRL beam has a possibility of efficient nanometer scale surface machining by an ablation. The ablation study will lead to the physical research and the direct surface machining. In addition, the wavelength of the SXRL is very close to the wavelength of the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography system (lambda = 13.5 nm). In the presentation, we report on development of the soft x-ray laser irradiation system. The irradiation system has an intensity monitor based on the Mo/Si multilayer beam splitter. This intensity monitor provides the irradiation energy onto sample surface. The SXRL has an ability to confirm the ablation threshold and to examine the damage property of EUV optical elements, which have the same specifications of those in the EUV lithography. And more, it is possible to evaluate the doses for sensitivity of resists.