In this paper, we report on a high-energy, high-power quasi-continuous wave (QCW) operation of a double-clad thulium (Tm) fiber laser. We constructed an efficient high-power Tm fiber laser which produced rectangular-shaped pulses at 1940 nm with a > 6 J pulse energy and a 10 ms pulse duration at a 10 Hz repetition rate, corresponding to an average power of > 60 W and a peak power of > 600 W for ~ 110 W of incident pump power at 793 nm. The detailed laser characteristics and the ablation of stones with a constructed laser are discussed.
We report a high power Yb:YAG thin disk laser with cylindrical vector polarization incorporating an intracavity S-waveplate. By adjusting the angle of the S-waveplate in the resonator, we could select a cylindrical vector polarization state of the laser output, radial or azimuthal polarization, in the Yb:YAG thin disk laser resonator. The laser yielded ⪆10 W of both radial or azimuthal polarized output for incident pump power of 131 W in continuous-wave mode of operation, corresponding to the slope efficiency of ⪆18%. Output characteristics will be discussed in detail.
We report Q-switched operation in a dual-cavity Nd:YAG laser using an acousto-optic modulator. A dual-cavity laser configuration allows selection of the TEM00 mode, LG01 mode, or multimode as a laser output simply by adjusting an aperture size in each cavity. Employing the acousto-optic modulator, the Nd:YAG laser produced Q-switched pulses of a 146 μJ pulse energy in the TEM00 mode, 140 μJ in the LG01 mode, and 160 μJ in the multimode.
We report experimental investigation of PD in Yb-doped fibers. From fluorescence spectra while pumping at 1018 nm and 976 nm, we can attribute the PD to existence of oxygen deficiency centers and its strong dependence on the excited Yb3+ ion density. Furthermore, we investigated the impact of PD on the laser amplification experiment, demonstrating that the tandem pumping at 1018 nm could dramatically reduce the PD-induced background loss compared to the LD pumping at 976 nm due to the low excited Yb3+ density. We will discuss the way to mitigate the PD in high power Yb fiber lasers.
High-power femtosecond (fs) lasers in the visible wavelength regime have numerous applications in areas including micro-machining, medical eye surgery, communication, spectroscopy, etc. To generate this laser beam, frequency conversion, especially second-harmonic generation (SHG), of near-IR lasers using nonlinear optical crystals is known to be the most standard technique. However, the use of a long-length crystal, which is preferred to achieve high SHG conversion efficiency for long-pulse or cw lasers, cannot be applied to the fs laser with broad linewidth due to the tight phase matching condition and the exacerbated walk-off effect. Thus the conditions of the nonlinear optical crystal should be optimized to achieve efficient SHG generation and hence, the high power visible fs laser pulses. There are many reports for the efficient SHG of the fs lasers but not many reports about influence of the crystal length on the SHG process, such as the pulse width and the linewidth and the conversion efficiency.
Here, we report efficient SHG of femtosecond Yb lasers at 1 um by optimizing the conditions of nonlinear optical crystals. The SHG pulse and the conversion efficiency were numerically calculated to find the optimized conditions of the nonlinear optical crystals for the high power fs laser pulses with different pulse widths. Preliminary experiments were conducted using a Type I LBO crystal and the femtosecond Yb laser at 1 um, which was in good agreement with the theoretical results. The theoretical and the experimental results for LBO and BBO crystals will be reported in detail.
Over the past several years, people have accomplished a great deal of developing the Extreme-ultraviolet lithography
(EUVL) technologies. However, several problems which disturb the mass-production of EUVL still remain. One of the
problems is the defect control. In order to protect the mask from defect, the usage of the pellicle is essential. However the
transmission loss caused by contamination can lead to the pattern error. Therefore it is necessary to find the acceptable
thickness of the contamination layer that would cause the image error. The protection ability of the pellicle in terms of
critical dimension variation is studied. Our study indicated that the process latitude difference is small enough to ignore
whether the pellicle is used or not. In addition the protection ability of pellicle is good against the case of conformal
contamination in terms of CD variation.
As is well known, a very short wavelength of 13.5 nm EUV is strongly absorbed by the most materials and this might cause huge heat deposition and as a result the pellicle deformation. Previously we have shown that the temperature rising of the thin pellicle membrane is minimal and cooling between the exposures is efficient enough so that we do not have to worry about the pellicle deformation. People still worry about the temperature rising of the mesh structure. We find that the cooling of the mesh was very slow and can pile up and damage the pellicle because thick (~ 50 μm) mesh structure has much larger mass compared to very thin (~ 50 nm) membrane. In order to see this heat behavior of the mesh, we intentionally increased the exposure time up to 2000 ms from normal 10 ms for Si, Zr, and Ni mesh. For the case of silicon mesh, the peak temperature rises up with the exposure time initially, but the temperature is not increased any more and is saturated even though more energy is deposited as the exposure time is increased. This result shows again that the heat pile up to pellicle including both membrane and mesh support can be managed and EUV pellicle can be used for EUV high volume manufacturing.
Extreme ultraviolet lithography is about to be realized in mass production even though there are many obstacles to be
overcome. Several years ago, the EUV pellicle was suggested by some people, but the idea of using the EUV pellicle
was abandoned by most people because there were big problems that were believed to be almost impossible to
overcome. The EUV pellicle should be made of an inorganic material instead of a common organic pellicle and should
be very thin due to EUV transmission. In addition to that the support of the very thin pellicle film should be used. The
structure of the support of the pellicle thin film should not make any noticeable intensity difference on the top of the
patterned mask side. However, the experimental result of the Intel showed the interference images with their suggested
support structure. In the Intel's report, the structure of the support was honeycomb or regular mesh type with a ~ 10 μm
line width and a ~100 μm pitch size. We study the intensity distributions on the top of mask for various combinations
around the above the mentioned scales and the support structures. The usable structure of the support will be reported
based on our simulation results, which would open the possibility of the EUV pellicle in mass production.
In EUVL, a pellicle is required for protecting the mask from contamination. However, the use of the pellicle at the real
applications is very challenging since temperature increase due to EUV light absorption can reduce the transmission of
EUV beams and distort a transmitted EUV beam profile. In the previous study, we consider the thermal behaviors of the
pellicle considering only the film during EUV lithography based on a simple thermal modeling using the heat transfer
equations. However the mesh is also required for supporting the thin film. Here we report the study of thermal behaviors
of the pellicle including both the film and the mesh. In the previous studies done by others, there are 3 cases depending
on linewidth and pitch and we review all the cases. And we take silicon as the material of thin film and wire-mesh. We
will show that the temperature increase of the mesh and its dependence on the structure are much smaller than those of
the film. Furthermore the conditions of a mesh structure and a material to reduce adverse thermal effects will be
discussed.
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