Report on EUVL Mask Substrate Development: Low-Expansion Substrate Finishing II

This report is a continuation of our assessment of the finishing of low thermal expansion material wafers obtained through three different commercial pathways. This quarter we have patterned and printed a ULE{reg_sign} wafer (Rodel 1) and saw no difference between its images and those from silicon wafer substrates. This further demonstrated that ULE{reg_sign} can be used as the EUVL mask substrate material. We have also evaluated substrates produced by three vendors: Hoya, General Optics, and Rodel. Consistent with our results reported last quarter, surface roughness of the bare substrates from all three companies does not depend on the position. For Hoya, the wafers it produced had a low roughness than those from last quarter. However, the cleanliness of the wafers needs to be improved. For General Optics, the wafer roughness has increased, and it was only able to deliver one wafer this quarter. General Optics will be replaced by Schott ML next quarter. For Rodel, one of its wafers (Rodel 1) that had been cleaned in-house showed excellent finishing and was selected to be patterned. We also observed that the sleeks on the substrates were smoothed by the ML coating. The other two Rodel wafers (Rodel 2 and Rodel 4) had too many defects and the roughness values derived from AFM are not reliable.