The dynamics and confinement of laser-created plumes expanding across a transverse magnetic field have been investigated. 1.06 m, 8 ns pulses from a neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet laser were used to create an aluminum plasma which was allowed to expand across a 0.64 T magnetic field. Fast photography, emission spectroscopy, and time of flight spectroscopy were used as diagnostic tools. Changes in plume structure and dynamics, enhanced emission and ionization, and velocity enhancement were observed in the presence of the magnetic field. Photographic studies showed that the plume is not fully stopped and diffuses across the field. The temperature of the plume was found to increase due to Joule heating and adiabatic compression. The time of flight studies showed that all of the species are slowed down significantly. A multiple peak temporal distribution was observed for neutral species.
Optical emission spectroscopic studies have been carried out on a tin plasma generated using 1064-nm, 8-ns pulses from a Nd:yttrium aluminum garnet laser. Temperature and density were estimated from the analysis of spectral data. The temperature measurements have been performed by Boltzmann diagram method using singly ionized Sn lines, while density measurements were made using the Stark broadening method. An initial temperature of 3.2 eV and density of 7.7×1017cm−3 were measured. Temporal and spatial behaviors of electron temperature and density in the laser-generated tin plasma have been analyzed. Time evolutions of density and temperature are found to decay adiabatically at early times. The spatial variation of density shows approximately 1∕z dependence. The time-integrated temperature exhibits an appreciable rise at distances greater than 7 mm. This may be caused by the deviation from local thermodynamic equilibrium at larger distances from the target surface.
Controlling the debris from a laser-generated tin plume is one of the prime issues in the development of an extreme ultraviolet lithographic light source. An ambient gas that is transparent to 13.5 nm radiation can be used for controlling highly energetic particles from the tin plume. We employed a partial ambient argon pressure for decelerating various species in the tin plume. The kinetic energy distributions of tin species were analyzed at short and large distances using time and space resolved optical emission spectroscopy and a Faraday cup, respectively. A fast-gated intensified charged coupled device was used for understanding the hydrodynamics of the plume's expansion into argon ambient. Our results indicate that the tin ions can be effectively mitigated with a partial argon pressure ϳ65 mTorr. Apart from thermalization and deceleration of plume species, the addition of ambient gas leads to other events such as double peak formation in the temporal distributions and ambient plasma formation.
We have investigated the unresolved transition array (UTA) emission around 13.5 nm from solid density tin and tin doped foam targets. Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectral measurements were made in the wavelength region 11–17 nm using a transmission grating spectrograph and the EUV in-band conversion efficiency was measured using an absolutely calibrated EUV calorimeter. The aim of this work was to optimize the UTA emission with the proper density of tin dopant in low-Z foam targets. The addition of tin as an impurity leads to a reduction in the plasma continuum and narrowing of the UTA compared with fully dense tin targets. Our studies indicate that the required percentage of tin for obtaining bright in-band spectral emission is less than 1%.
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