We investigated Ru mirror contamination and subsequent EUV reflectivity loss using the IMPACT facility at Purdue University. Because Ru can either be used as a grazing mirror or as a capping layer for multilayer normal mirror, we examined the angular dependency of XPS peak area intensity at the O 1s and Ru 3d regions as well as the effects of sputtering. Although no change in intensity has been observed at lower take-off angles from the target surface, the peak area intensity starts changing with increasing θ (i.e., emission observation angle, representing the angle between the target surface plane and detector entrance). Among different components, the effect of water and oxidized carbon are found to be most notable when viewed at lower θ, and primarily responsible for degrading the reflectivity of the Ru layer. On the other hand, the effect of OH becomes dominant with increasing observation angle θ, and thus plays a key role to suppress optical transmission. Moreover, atomic carbon effect is found to peak when observed at 30°, and most likely plays an important role in degrading both reflectivity and transmission. This is also because of the total photon path length in the Ru film at different angles. During the contamination process, the EUV reflectivity of the Ru film is found to significantly degrade in the presence of additional secondary electrons from the focusing Ru mirror of the EUV setup. This effect could be explained in the light of a competition between oxidation and carbonization processes on Ru surface.

Date Published: 23 March 2012
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 8322, Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Lithography III, 832233 (23 March 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.916417

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8322:
Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Lithography III
Patrick P. Naulleau; Obert R. Wood II, Editor(s)