The discharge pumped excimer laser is a gas laser providing ultra violet (UV) radiation with well defined spectral, temporal and spatial properties. The fast development of excimer lasers in recent years has succeeded in designing very compact, turn-key systems delivering up to 10 W of radiation at 248 nm (5 W at 193 nm and 1 W at 157 nm)with repetition rates up to 1000 Hz [1]. Experimental data on important beam properties of excimer lasers in the field of mask inspection are being presented and discussed. Relevant parameters are spectral bandwidth, energetic pulse-topulse stability, pulse duration, beam pointing stability, beam direction stability, beam dimension, beam profile and coherence. We will compare the excimer laser with lamp sources and continuous wave (CW) lasers in the framework of these parameters. The discussion will show future opportunities of compact excimer lasers in optical inspection as well as in mask writing systems, improving resolution and throughput.

The discharge pumped excimer laser is a gas laser providing ultra violet (UV) radiation with well defined spectral, temporal and spatial properties. The fast development of excimer lasers in recent years has succeeded in designing very compact, table-top and turn-key systems delivering up to 20 W of radiation at 248 nm, 10 W at 193 nm and 2 W at 157 nm with repetition rates up to 2000 Hz (1, 5). Due to their short emission wavelength and compactness they are continuously replacing other light sources, like lamps and ion lasers, in applications as metrology, inspection, direct writing and material testing. Spatial and temporal beam properties of compact excimer lasers are very suitable to be utilized as illumination source in these applications. The compact excimer laser is combining the advantages of both, lamp and laser sources. It displays low temporal and spatial coherence, but has a narrow spectral emission range of a few hundred pm. The beam area is approximately ½ cm 2 , the divergence is in the order of 1 mrad. Variation of beam position and beam direction are negligible for most illumination applications. Compact excimer lasers are easy to integrate in measurement and inspection systems. Typically their footprint area is 0.25 m 2 . The power consumption is less than 1 kW, enabling single phase electrical supply and air cooling. State-of-the-art compact excimer lasers are compliant to all relevant SEMI regulations. The laser optics exceeds the life time of the laser tube, thus no optics cleaning and exchange is necessary in a whole life time of a laser tube of a few billion pulses (6).

The discharge pumped excimer laser is a gas laser providing ultra violet (UV) radiation with well defined spectral, temporal and spatial properties. The fast development of excimer lasers in recent years has succeeded in designing very compact, turn-key systems delivering up to 10 W of radiation at 248 nm (5 W at 193 nm and 1 W at 157 nm) with repetition rates up to 1000 Hz [1]. Experimental data on important beam properties of excimer lasers in the field of mask inspection are being presented and discussed. Relevant parameters are spectral bandwidth, energetic pulse-to-pulse stability, pulse duration, beam pointing stability, beam direction stability, beam dimension, beam profile and coherence. We will compare the excimer laser with lamp sources and continuous wave (CW) lasers in the framework of these parameters. The discussion will show future opportunities of compact excimer lasers in optical inspection as well as in mask writing systems, improving resolution and throughput.