By Vivek Bakshi

A lot of effort goes into enabling EUV sources for EUVL scanners and mask defect metrology tools to ensure they meet the requirements for production level tools. Researchers and suppliers around the world have been working on many issues to ensure their availability.

Challenges include modeling of sources, improvement of conversion efficiency, finding ways to increase source brightness, spectral purity filter development and contamination control. These and other issues are among topics that were proposed by a technical working group for the 2013 Source Workshop in Dublin, Ireland. A detailed list of topics is available at this link.

This workshop also will invite experts on XUV and BEUV sources, as learning and applications in those areas are very relevant to EUV sources. Due to lack of funding in the EUV source area and the emerging XUV market, many source experts are now also working in XUV sources.

Now in its fourth year, the annual Source Workshop is the industry’s largest gathering of source experts. This year’s keynote talks are from ASML, Intel and University of Colorado, Boulder. The agenda can be found here and abstracts can be found at this link.

Abstracts for post-deadline poster papers will be accepted until October 15, 2013 at [email protected]. I will share the highlights of the Workshop on this blog in mid-November.