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Last year Gigaphoton introduced a 45-W ArF excimer laser, model GT40A, to semiconductor markets as a light source for 65 nm lithography generation. The GT40A is based on injection lock technology with G-electrode, magnetic bearing and high resolution technologies for high reliability and long lifetime. As a result, GT40A showed the stable performance during the chamber maintenance interval of over 15 billion pulses. In this paper we will report the longterm stability of GT40A.

Mass production in 193 nm lithography is now starting and its target node is moving from 90 nm to 65 nm. The main performance requirement of ArF excimer laser in this situation is high power with ultra narrow spectrum for higher throughput. The other hand, higher reliability and lower cost of ownership (CoO) are strongly hoped in mass production because CoO of ArF excimer laser is still higher than that of KrF excimer laser. We have already reported the 4 kHz ArF excimer laser for mass production, model G42A, which has an 20 W of average power, spectral bandwidth less than 0.3 pm (FWHM) and a spectral purity less than 0.75 pm (E95). We applied some technologies to G42A for achieving the high reliability and long lifetime. As a result, G42A showed the stable performance during the lifetime of over 10 billion pulses. In this paper, we report the long-term stability of G42A. And also, we introduce the reliability data of G40A series, which is the previous 4 kHz ArF excimer laser model.© (2004) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

193-nm lithography is going to move from pre-production phase to mass production phase and its target node become narrowing from 90 nm to 65 nm. In these situations, the laser manufacture needs to provide the high durable ArF excimer laser, which has superior spectrum performance. Gigaphoton has already introduced 4 kHz ArF laser (model G41A) to 193-nm lithography market, which produce 20 W and spectrum bandwidth of 0.35 pm (FWHM). G41A has showed high reliability and long lifetime over 5 billion pulses. In this paper, we report on the 4 kHz ArF excimer laser for mass production, model G42A, which has 20 W, spectral bandwidth less than 0.3 pm (FWHM) and a spectral purity less than 0.75 pm (E95).

We have developed a 4-kHz ArF excimer laser with ultra-narrow bandwidth, which is applicable to high-NA scanners for sub-0.13-micrometers microlithography. In this paper, we describe a 4-kHz ArF excimer laser for mass production: the model G40A, which has an output power of 20 W and energy dose stability of less than +/- 0.3% (20-ms window) at 4 kHz. This dose stability is comparable to the performance of an existing 2-kHz ArF excimer laser, the model G20A. The new laser also has the following specifications: a long pulse duration of over 40 ns, spectral bandwidth of less than 0.35 pm (FWHM), and spectral purity of less than 1.0 pm (95%). These characteristics are better than those of the G20A. A lifetime test of over 7 billion pulses has been conducted at 4-kHz operation. The new laser has maintained an energy dose stability of less than +/- 0.3% (20-ms windows) and demonstrated performance suitable for mass production even after over 7 billion pulses.

In the semiconductor industry, it is one of the most important issues to reduce manufacturing cost of the semiconductor device by increasing throughput. We have succeeded in the development of the high repetition rate excimer laser technology, and obtained the prospect of low CoO of the laser device. In this paper, we present the performance and advanced technologies of the newest model of the KrF excimer laser for microlithography; KLES-G20K. The laser achieves 20 W of output power with 0.6 pm bandwidth at 2 kHz. The pulse to pulse energy stability, 3 sigma is less than 6 percent and integrated energy stability is within +/- 0.4 percent. By our estimation, more than 50 percent of CoO of the laser device is cut by adopting developed machine compared to a present one.