NSF Award
9361115
9361115 Boyers The objective of this research is to explore the feasibility of developing a high intensity UV excimer source for the demanding requirements of the semiconductor manufacturing and materials processing industry. Emerging processing technologies not requiring a coherent source including UV wafer cleaning and photo CVD will require very high UV intensities over large areas (100mW/cm@) currently only available from excimer lasers. Conventional UV lamps are inadequate for the task. Excimer lasers cannot conveniently illuminate a large field size, are often difficult to integrate into a production tool, and have a very high cost of ownership. The phase I research will be directed toward establishing the feasibility of developing a UV excimer lamp and excitation source with the required performance : 1) A lamp and excitation source will be designed and fabricated. 2) The spectrum and UV efficiency will be measured with pure Xe (172 nm). 3) A preliminary full scale design and cost estimate will be prepared. The Phase II research will be directed toward the construction of a full scale prototype for operation with other excimer gas mixtures such as ArFl*(193 nm), KrCL* (222 nm), KrF* (249 nm), and XeCl* (351 nm). If successful, this program will lead to the development of a critical manufacturing resource for use in the fabrication of the next generation of semiconductor devices. ***
