High-space resolution imaging plate analysis of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light from tin laser-produced plasmas

With the advent of high volume manufacturing capabilities by extreme ultraviolet lithography, constant improvements in light source design and cost-efficiency are required. Currently, light intensity and conversion efficiency (CE) measurments are obtained by charged couple devices, faraday cups etc, but also phoshpor imaging plates (IPs) (BaFBr:Eu). IPs are sensitive to light and high-energy species, which is ideal for studying extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light from laser produced plasmas (LPPs). In this work, we used IPs to observe a large angular distribution (10°-90°). We ablated a tin target by high-energy lasers (1064 nm Nd:YAG, 10¹⁰ and 10¹¹ W/cm²) to generate the EUV light. The europium ions in the IP were trapped in a higher energy state from exposure to EUV light and high-energy species. The light intensity was angular dependent; therefore excitation of the IP depends on the angle, and so highly informative about the LPP. We obtained high-space resolution (345 μm, 0.2°) angular distribution and grazing spectrometer (5-20 nm grate) data simultaneously at different target to IP distances (103 mm and 200 mm). Two laser systems and IP types (BAS-TR and BAS-SR) were also compared. The cosine fitting values from the IP data were used to calculate the CE to be 1.6% (SD ± 0.2) at 13.5 nm 2% bandwidth. Finally, a practical assessment of IPs and a damage issue are disclosed.