Diamond-like carbon (DLC) is a highly adaptable material that, in thin film form, can have controllable density, band gap, optical constants, and stress, depending on the growth process. Blanket DLC film can be protected against hydrogen erosion by a protective or functional material, which is an advantage over porous material, like carbon nanotubes that require a conformal protective coating for hydrogen protection. Various film growth techniques have been employed to enhance DLC's versatility by reducing density and stress, resulting in improved EUV transmission and stability. Previously, we experimentally demonstrated that film grown using physical vapor deposition is about 23% less dense than the films made by pulsed filtered cathodic arc. Our experimental data indicate that the EUV extinction coefficient decreases equally with density, confirming its direct relation with density. In this work, we used another technique, ion beam deposition (IBD) with hydrocarbon plasma, to grow low-density DLC. Our data show that the extinction coefficient continues to decrease with density, confirming this new pathway for DLC towards a viable blanket material for pellicle applications.
Ion beam deposition (IBD) is the process-of-record for fabricating Mo/Si multilayers (MLs) for EUV mask blanks. This process affords outstanding ML performance in terms of defectivity, central wavelength control, and reflectivity. However, the above parameters are strongly dependent on physical and chemical inhomogeneities of the deposited MLs. Here we study systematically the effect of film purity, density, thickness uniformity, and interfacial roughness/intermixing, on the reflectance and imaging performance of Mo/Si MLs. Structural and spectral characteristics of ML are investigated experimentally, and the results compared to optical simulations. These findings may benefit the design and optimization of Mo/Si MLs with tailored spectral characteristics.
Understanding the optical properties of carbon allotropes is important due to their high potential for EUV applications, both in reticle, as a capping layer and also in pellicle as a protective layer. Equally important is finding the effect of density, thickness and stress on the optical properties in the EUV range. It is well known that the density and stress of diamond-like carbon (DLC) thin films depend on the sp3/sp2 ratio, where higher sp3 ratio results in higher density and stress. While there have been some studies on EUV optical constants of different types DLC films, grown with different techniques, it is not clear how the EUV optical constants vary with sp3/sp2 ratio and density. Using single-bend pulsed filter cathodic arc and PVD thin films of DLC are prepared. The variations of refraction and extinction coefficients, as well as reflectivity are presented.
Experimental data, and optical calculations, are presented for the impact of Ruthenium and Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) capping layers on the EUV reflectivity (EUVR) of Mo/Si multilayers. The multilayers and Ruthenium are deposited by secondary ion beam deposition, while the DLC is deposited by Pulsed Filtered Cathodic Arc. In both cases, the optimal capping layer thickness is shown to be ~ 2.5nm, providing the smallest degradation from the baseline multilayer reflectivity. 2.5nm Ruthenium is demonstrated to result in a drop of 1.8% reflectivity relative to the bare multilayer. In contrast, 2.5nm of DLC results in a drop of only 0.6%, so 1.2% improvement over the typical Ruthenium cap. Optical calculations support the qualitative features of the experimental data, with closer matching when realistic interlayers (1.5nm RuSi or 0.5nm C/Si) and realistic oxide layers (0.6nm RuO2) are included.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.