Generation of soft x rays using a rare gas-hydrogen plasma focus and its application to x-ray lithography

Abstract

A conventional plasma focus device was used to produce a hot, dense plasma which emits radiation strongly in the soft x-ray region. We showed experimentally that a plasma produced from a mixture of hydrogen and a rare gas such as neon, argon, or krypton is an effective source of a characteristic x ray of the rare gas. Resist exposures and pattern printings were made to evaluate the feasibility of this device as a source for soft x-ray lithography.

Effect of energetic ion irradiation on CdI2 films

“…Being such a versatile source, it has been used in various applications such as a neutron source for pulsed activation analysis 9 , a spectroscopic source for production of highly ionized species 10 , a pump source for lasers 11 , a high flux X-ray source for lithography 12 , an electron source for micro-lithography 13 , and a highly energetic ion source for processing of materials 14,15,16,17 and thin film deposition 18,19 . The Mather-type DPF device at NIE-SSC-PFF, Singapore was used 20 .…”

Deposition of nanolayers by means of dense plasma focus

“…The energy of ions generated during plasma focus discharge is within the range from 25 keV to 10 MeV [10]. As it was estimated in [11] the energy associated with ions within a shot in our case was about 60 and 200 J for two samples obtained at 0.8 and 2.5 kJ of released energy, respectively. Also surface injury may take place due to reverse voltage phenomena while high energy ions ablate relatively big clusters of anode material which later can attack the layer surface.…”

“…Plasma focus (PF) has been successfully used as a pulsed ionizing radiation source for many applications: pulsed neutron activation analysis [1], as a high flux X-ray source for lithography and radiography [2,3,4], as highly energetic ion source for processing of materials in the form of thin films [5] and so on. All the radiation is produced at the high-current discharge in a vacuum chamber filled with different gases at pressure of 0.1÷10 mbar for hydrogen and its isotopes and of 10 −2 ÷10 −1 mbar for noble gases.…”

Experimental investigation of the effect of insulator sleeve length on the time to pinch and multipinch formation in the plasma focus facility

“…It is also a rich source of soft and hard X-rays [5,6], highly energetic ions [7,8] and relativistic electrons [9]. The X-ray emission from PFD has been used for defectoscopy, X-ray lithography activation of enzymes, micro-machining and radiography [10][11][12][13]. The energetic ions have been used for material processing such as ion implantation and thin films [14][15][16].…”