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We describe the fabrication of the two NuSTAR flight optics modules. The NuSTAR optics modules are glass-graphiteepoxy composite structures to be employed for the first time in space-based X-ray optics by NuSTAR, a NASA Small Explorer schedule for launch in February 2012. We discuss the optics manufacturing process, the qualification and environmental testing performed, and briefly discuss the results of X-ray performance testing of the two modules. The integration and alignment of the completed flight optics modules into the NuSTAR instrument is described as are the optics module thermal shields.

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope ARray (NuSTAR) is a NASA Small Explorer mission that will carry the first focusing hard X-ray (5–80 keV) telescope to orbit. The ground calibration of the optics posed a challenge as the need to suppress finite source distance effects over the full optic and the energy range of interest were unique requirements not met by any existing facility. In this paper we present the requirements for the NuSTAR optics ground calibration, and how the Rainwater Memorial Calibration Facility, RaMCaF, is designed to meet the calibration requirements. The nearly 175 m long beamline sports a 48 cm diameter 5–100 keV X-ray beam and is capable of carrying out detailed studies of large diameter optic elements, such as the NuSTAR optics, as well as flat multilayer-coated Silicon wafers.

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is a NASA Small Explorer mission that will carry the first focusing hard X-ray (5 − 80 keV ) telescope to orbit. The ground calibration of the three flight optics was carried out at the Rainwater Memorial Calibration Facility (RaMCaF) built for this purpose. In this article we present the facility and its use for the ground calibration of the three optics.

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is a NASA Small Explorer mission scheduled for launch in February 2012. NuSTAR will deploy two imaging CdZnTe spectrometers in the 6-79 keV energy band. The two NuSTAR optics utilize multilayer-coated, thermally-slumped glass integrated into a titanium-glass-epoxy-graphite composite structure, along with an extendable mast, to obtain 10.15 meter focal length. Using this approach, the NuSTAR optics will obtain subarcminute imaging with large effective area over its entire energy band. NuSTAR's conic-approximation Wolter-I optics are the first true hard X-ray focusing optics to be deployed on a satellite experiment. We report on the design of the NuSTAR optics, present the status of the two flight optics under construction, and report preliminary measurements that can be used to predict performance.

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is a NASA satellite mission scheduled for launch in 2011. Using focusing optics with multilayer coating for enhanced reflectivity of hard X-rays (6-79 keV), NuSTAR will provide a combination of clarity, sensitivity and spectral resolution surpassing the largest observatories in this band by orders of magnitude. This advance will allow NuSTAR to test theories of how heavy elements are born, discover collapsed stars and black holes on all scales and explore the most extreme physical environments. We will present an overview of the NuSTAR optics design and production process and detail the optics performance.

Full-field imaging with a developmental projection optic box (POB 1) was successfully demonstrated in the alpha tool Engineering Test Stand (ETS) last year. Since then, numerous improvements, including laser power for the laser-produced plasma (LPP) source, stages, sensors, and control system have been made. The LPP has been upgraded from the 40 W LPP cluster jet source used for initial demonstration of full-field imaging to a high-power (1500 W) LPP source with a liquid Xe spray jet. Scanned lithography at various laser drive powers of >500 W has been demonstrated with virtually identical lithographic performance.

Image fidelity is one of the fundamental requirements in lithography and it is becoming more important as feature sizes shrink below 90 nm. Image distortion depends on the mask deformation caused by the intrinsic stress in the film-substrate system. To develop an understanding of stress generation and to control film quality, measuring film stress is essential. In recent years, research laboratories and industry have increasingly adopted indirect methods for determining film stress. All of these methods are based on the measurement of substrate deformation, and the film stress is calculated from the substrate curvature by the local application of Stoney’s equation. When the two principal stresses at each point in the film plane are not equal to each other and their distribution is not uniform, the local application of Stoney’s equation is invalid. Even though the accuracy of the measurement may be high, the stress determined may not be. An alternative technique based on numerical analysis has been developed. The limitations of using Stoney’s equation and the new stress measurement technique are discussed in this paper.

Development of manufacturing infrastructure is required to ensure a commercial source of mask substrates for the timely introduction of EUVL. Improvements to the low thermal expansion materials that compose the substrate have been made, but need to be scaled to production quantities. We have been evaluating three challenging substrate characteristics to determine the state of the infrastructure for the finishing of substrates. First, surface roughness is on track and little risk is associated with achieving the roughness requirement as an independent specification. Second, with new flatness-measuring equipment just coming on line, the vendors are poised for improvement toward the SEMI P37 flatness specification. Third, significant acceleration is needed in the reduction of defect levels on substrates. The lack of high-sensitivity defect metrology at the vendors' sites is limiting progress in developing substrates for EUVL.

Static and scanned images of 100 nm dense features were successfully obtained with a developmental set of projection optics and a 500W drive laser laser-produced-plasma (LPP) source in the Engineering Test Stand (ETS). The ETS, configured with POB1, has been used to understand system performance and acquire lithographic learning which will be used in the development of EUV high volume manufacturing tools. The printed static images for dense features below 100 nm with the improved LPP source are comparable to those obtained with the low power LPP source, while the exposure time was decreased by more than 30x. Image quality comparisons between the static and scanned images with the improved LPP source are also presented. Lithographic evaluation of the ETS includes flare and contrast measurements. By using a resist clearing method, the flare and aerial image contrast of POB1 have been measured, and the results have been compared to analytical calculations and computer simulations.

This paper presents the results of patterned and unpatterned EUV mask inspections. We will show inspection results related to EUV patterned mask design factors that affect inspection tool sensitivity, in particular, EUV absorber material reflectivity, and EUV buffer layer thickness. We have used a DUV (257nm) inspection system to inspect patterned reticles, and have achieved defect size sensitivities on patterned reticles of approximately 80 nm. We have inspected EUV substrates and blanks with a UV (364nm) tool with a 90nm to a 120 nm PSL sensitivity, respectively, and found that defect density varies markedly, by factors of 10 and more, from sample to sample. We are using this information in an ongoing effort to reduce defect densities in substrates and blanks to the low levels that will be needed for EUV lithography. While DUV tools will likely meet the patterned inspection requirements of the 70 nm node in terms of reticle defect sensitivity, wavelengths shorter than 200 nm will be required to meet the 50 nm node requirements. This research was sponsored in part by NIST-ATP under KLA-Tencor Cooperative Agreement #70NANB8H44024.

The reflective reticles used for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography are subject to the stringent image placement and flatness requirements for 70 nm and smaller feature sizes. Stresses in the reflective multilayer coatings can produce substantial bowing of the reticle, and variations in the flatness and thickness of the reticle substrate, as well as entrapped debris particles, can contribute to flatness errors on the patterned surface after reticle chucking. Reticles will also be subjected to high stage accelerations and thermal loadings during exposure. The chuck in the exposure tool will be required to clamp the reticle flat, crush entrapped debris, remove absorbed EUV energy, and prevent slippage during stage accelerations. Additionally, the thermal and structural behavior of the chuck will influence the reticle response, and thus the reticle and chuck must be considered as a system. In order to determine reticle and chucking requirements, finite element models have been developed to analyze many of the key issues in the mechanical design of the reticle and chuck. The analyses are being used to support the development of reticle and chuck standards for EUV lithography.

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography has emerged as the forerunner in the selection process to become the industry's choice as the technology for next-generation lithography (NGL). An advantageous characteristic of the EUV reticle is that it is reflective, so it can be chucked across the entirety of its backside. This chucking will aid in meeting flatness requirements as well enhancing the heat removal ability of the chuck when compared to the mounts used for optical reticles. The EUV exposure process occurs in a vacuum environment, which precludes the use of vacuum chucks; therefore, electrostatic chucks are the favored choice. One concern is that particles may become lodged between the chuck and reticle, causing distortions to occur once the reticle is chucked flat. To counter this effect, electrostatic pin chucks have been proposed. However, because of the lower heat transfer ability of the pin chuck due to the interstitial gap, thermal issues may arise. A predominant pin-chuck configuration has yet to emerge, and there is no set of standards to facilitate new designs. The intent of this paper is to provide general guidelines to assist in preliminary designs. Parameters that were seen as potentially important factors in pin chuck performance were chosen and the results are presented.

While interferometry is routinely used for the characterization and alignment of lithographic optics, the ultimate performance metric for these optics is printing in photoresist. The comparison of lithographic imaging with that predicted from wavefront performance is also useful for verifying and improving the predictive power of wavefront metrology. To address these issues, static, small-field printing capabilities have been added to the EUV phase-shifting point diffraction interferometer (PS/PDI) implemented at the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The combined system remains extremely flexible in that switching between interferometry and imaging modes can be accomplished in approximately two weeks. Relevant printing studies with the ETS projection optics require illumination partial coherence with a of approximately 0.7. However, this a value is very different from the coherent illumination naturally provided by synchrotron undulator beamline and required by the high accuracy EUV PS/PDI. Adding printing capabilities to the PS/PDI experimental system has thus necessitated the development of an alternative illumination system capable of quantitatively reducing the inherent coherence of the beamline. The implemented illuminator is an angular scanning system capable of in situ coherence control. Moreover, this illuminator design readily enables the implementation of conventional resolution-enhancing pupil fills and modeling of the unique Engineering Test Stand (ETS) pupil fill. This new static microfield exposure tool has been used to lithographically characterize the static imaging performance of the ETS Set-2 projection optics. Excellent performance has been demonstrated down to the 70-nm 1:1 line/space level with a focus latitude exceeding 1 μm and a dose latitude of approximately 8%. Moreover, dense-line printing down to a resolution of 50 nm has been demonstrated.

The nanometer-scale plastic behavior of two low thermal expansion glasses (ULE® and Zerodur®) was determined through a combination of nanoindentation experiments and finite element modeling. The finite element models were then extended to investigate aspects of the performance of these materials as extreme ultraviolet lithography reticles.

The Engineering Test Stand (ETS) is an EUV lithography tool designed to demonstrate full-field EUV imaging and provide data required to accelerate production-tool development. Early lithographic results and progress on continuing functional upgrades are presented and discussed. In the ETS a source of 13.4 nm radiation is provided by a laser plasma source in which a Nd:YAG laser beam is focused onto a xenon- cluster target. A condenser system, comprised of multilayer-coated and grazing incidence mirrors, collects the EUV radiation and directs it onto a reflecting reticle. The resulting EUV illumination at the reticle and pupil has been measured and meets requirements for acquisition of first images. Tool setup experiments have been completed using a developmental projection system with (lambda) /14 wavefront error (WFE), while the assembly and alignment of the final projection system with (lambda) /24 WFE progresses in parallel. These experiments included identification of best focus at the central field point and characterization of imaging performance in static imaging mode. A small amount of astigmatism was observed and corrected in situ, as is routinely done in advanced optical lithographic tools. Pitch and roll corrections were made to achieve focus throughout the arc-shaped field of view. Scan parameters were identified by printing dense features with varying amounts of magnification and skew correction. Through-focus scanned imaging results, showing 100 nm isolated and dense features, will be presented. Phase 2 implementation goals for the ETS will also be discussed.© (2001) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Detailed thermal expansion measurements and internal homogeneity measurements of the glass-ceramic material Zerodur were undertaken to examine its usefulness for EUVL. Repeat measurements on 100-mm long samples from three castings exhibit an expansion of approximately 12 +/- 2 ppb/K 2 (sigma) in the temperature range of interest for EUVL, corresponding to Class C of the draft SEMI 3148 standard. Internal homogeneity measurements reveal extremely small refractive index variations, suggesting comparably small compositional variations. This in turn is viewed as a necessary but not sufficient condition for high CTE uniformity, a factor required by EUVL applications.

The Engineering Test Stand (ETS) is a developmental lithography tool designed to demonstrate full-field EUV imaging and provide data for commercial-tool development. In the first phase of integration, currently in progress, the ETS is configured using a developmental projection system, while fabrication of an improved projection system proceeds in parallel. The optics in the second projection system have been fabricated to tighter specifications for improved resolution and reduced flare. The projection system is a 4-mirror, 4x-reduction, ring-field design having a numeral aperture of 0.1, which supports 70 nm resolution at a k{sub 1} of 0.52. The illuminator produces 13.4 nm radiation from a laser-produced plasma, directs the radiation onto an arc-shaped field of view, and provides an effective fill factor at the pupil plane of 0.7. The ETS is designed for full-field images in step-and-scan mode using vacuum-compatible, magnetically levitated, scanning stages. This paper describes system performance observed during the first phase of integration, including static resist images of 100 nm isolated and dense features.

We are collaborating with the Center for Optics Manufacturing (Rochester, NY) to develop optimal designs of fine diamond grinding wheels for the spherical grinding of glass optics. To this end, we typically employ a standardized method1 for wheel performance evaluation that focuses on workpiece quality, including surface roughness, figure and subsurface damage. New elements of our work include the use of in-process acoustic emission (AE) measurements for correlating with performance and the use of 3-D surface profiles of wheel topography. This paper includes recent AE measurements taken during the evaluation of several fine diamond grinding wheels and discusses how this new information might relate to the physical performance of the wheels. An interesting observation is also reported relating to the surface topography of worn bronze wheels using an interferometric profiler.

LLNL is collaborating with the Center for Optics Manufacturing (COM) and the American Precision Optics Manufacturers Association (APOMA) to optimize bound diamond ring tools for the spherical generation of high quality optical surfaces. An important element of this work is establishing an experimentally-verified link between tooling properties and workpiece quality indicators such as roughness, subsurface damage and removal rate. In this paper, we report on a standardized methodology for assessing ring tool performance and its preliminary application to a set of commercially-available wheels. Our goals are to (1) assist optics manufacturers (users of the ring tools) in evaluating tools and in assessing their applicability for a given operation, and (2) provide performance feedback to wheel manufacturers to help optimize tooling for the optics industry. Our paper includes measurements of wheel performance for three 2-4 micron diamond bronze-bond wheels that were supplied by different manufacturers to nominally- identical specifications. Preliminary data suggests that the difference in performance levels among the wheels were small.

The traditional theory of brittle-fracture grinding is based on self-sharpening of grains of wheels. Ductile regime grinding requires precision truing and dressing of wheels so that the diamond grains protrude above the bond material surface.

The Semiconductor Industry Association Roadmap for Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL) calls for significant improvements in the quality and flatness of the substrate and patterned mask. Due to the difficulty of meeting the mask flatness specifications, an alternative strategy has been proposed to ensure that suitable substrates will be available for EUVL. A new SEMI standard for EUVL electrostatic chucks is currently being developed. If such a standard were established, then the flatness requirements for the substrate might be relaxed to permit certain types of bow that can later be flattened by the chuck. The purpose of this study is to identify which shapes can indeed be flattened by an electrostatic chuck. To support the proposed strategy, it is essential that the clamping ability of the electrostatic chuck be characterized and well-understood. The ability of the chuck to flatten the mask will depend primarily on the mechanical stiffness of the chuck and the clamping pressure. Legendre polynomials have been identified as an effective and efficient means of representing EUVL mask surface shapes. Finite element (FE) models have been developed to utilize the Legendre polynomials as input data to define the surfaces of the reticle. The FE models were then used to determine the clamping response of the various mask shapes. In particular, the maximum reticle-to-chuck gap within the flatness quality area and over the entire reticle has been tracked as a function of clamping pressure and chuck thickness for the low-order Legendre modes.

Since the goal of extreme ultraviolet lithography is to produce circuit patterns with critical dimensions less than 65 nm, a key to its success will be to identify and minimize the major sources of image placement (IP) error at the wafer. Two sources of IP error are in-plane distortion (IPD) and out-of-plane deformation (OPD) of the patterned reticle during chucking in the exposure tool. Among the many possible causes of IPD and OPD is particle contamination. Small pieces of debris lodged between the reticle and chuck have the potential to distort the pattern that is transferred to the device wafer. Such distortions may consume an unduly large portion of the error budget allotted to image placement. In order to limit these IP errors, it is first necessary to gain a thorough understanding of the behavior of a particle trapped during the chucking process. This article describes the techniques that were used to study these trapped particles and their potential effects on pattern placement accuracy.

The extreme ultraviolet (EUV) Engineering Test Stand (ETS) is a step-and-scan lithography tool that operates at a wavelength of 13.4 nm. It has been developed to demonstrate full-field EUV imaging and acquire system learning for equipment manufacturers to develop commercial tools. The initial integration of the tool is being carried out using a developmental set of projection optics, while a second, higher-quality, projection optics is being assembled and characterized in a parallel effort. We present here the first lithographic results from the ETS, which include both static and scanned resist images of 100 nm dense and isolated features throughout the ring field of the projection optics. Accurate lithographic models have been developed and compared with the experimental results.