Comparison of laser produced and gas discharge based EUV sources for different applications

Pulsed plasmas, e.g., laser produced plasma (LPP) and gas discharge based p inch plasmas are known as intense sources of soft x-ray and extreme ultravi olet (EUV) radiation in the wavelength interval of about 1 nm to beyond 50 nm. They can be generated in compact, laboratory scale devices. Both scheme s exhibit similar source characteristics concerning, e.g., wavelength regio n, bandwidth, source size, emitted radiation per pulse or average emitted p ower when operated at similar parameters. By exploiting their technological degrees of freedom their source characteristics can be matched to the spec ial demands of a given application like EUV-lithography or metrology, x-ray microscopy, XPS or other x-ray analytics. In this work laser produced and gas discharge based plasmas are compared wi th respect to their source characteristics. The comparison concerns to a la ser produced plasma using a commercial 1 J Nd:YAG laser with different targ et concepts (liquid, cryogenic or solid target) and a gas discharge based E UV sources with electrical pulse energies of about 1 J. The same absolute c alibrated diagnostics used for both plasmas allows for a direct comparison.