This phase I small business innovation research will explore the feasibility of developing a planar xenon excimer lamp for the demanding requirements of the semiconductor manufacturing and materials processing industry. Emerging process applications not requiring a coherent source include in-situ UV reticle cleaning for 157 nm lithography and in-situ pre-deposition cleaning. 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. This phase I research will be directed toward establishing the feasibility of developing a planar xenon excimer lamp with an irradiance of 100 mW/cm2. We have established three goals to guide our work in phase I: 1) design and fabricate a planar excimer lamp with a single substrate electrode structure, 2) evaluate the emission uniformity of the lamp filled with pure Xenon (172 nm), and 3) measure the UV spectra and radiant power output of the lamp. Anticipated Benefits/Commercial Applications: Excimer lamps can be designed to operate with a number of different excimer gas mixtures including Ar* (126 nm), Kr* (146 nm), Xe* (172 nm), KrCl*(222 nm), and XeCl (308 nm). Semiconductor manufacturing and materials processing applications include in-situ reticle cleaning for 157 nm lithography, in-situ pre-deposition cleaning, photo-chemical vapor deposition, and UV curing. In many of these applications excimer lasers are currently the only available intense narrow band UV sources. In manufacturing applications where large areas or large volumes have to be illuminated, an incoherent excimer source promises several advantages including scalability to high UV power levels, high reliability, compact size, and lower total cost of ownership.
Keywords: UV, excimer, incoherent, semiconductor, electronic, materials, device, processing
