Abstract
Discharge-excited ArF excimer lasers, whose wavelength is 193 nm in the VUV region, are promising light sources for several applications such as laser depositions of high-Tc oxide super conductors and lithography for 256-Mb and 1-Gb dynamic random access memories. The gas lifetimes for ArF excimer lasers, however, are shorter than those for XeCl and KrF excimer lasers because almost all impurities generated in the laser vessel absorb much more of the 193 nm laser light than the impurities for longer wavelength lasers. ArF excimer lasers on the market have short gas lifetimes below 106 shots. In this work, a long gas lifetime of 2 × 106 shots without a gas purifier for an ArF excimer laser has been achieved by adopting alumina ceramics for an insulator in the laser vessel to prevent CF4 impurity generation. This gas lifetime is almost two times longer than that of a conventional ArF excimer laser.
© 1991 Optical Society of America
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