A novel condenser for EUV lithography ring-field projection optics

A condenser for a ring-field extreme ultra-violet (EUV) projection lithography camera is presented. The condenser consists of a gently undulating mirror, that we refer to as a ripple plate, and which is illuminated by a collimated beam at grazing incidence. The light is incident along the ripples rather than across them, so that the incident beam is reflected onto a cone and subsequently focused on to the are of the ring field. A quasistationary illumination is achieved, since any one held point receives light from points on the ripples, which are distributed throughout the condenser pupil. The design concept can easily be applied to illuminate projection cameras with various ring-field and numerical aperture specifications. Ray-tracing results are presented of a condenser for a 0.25 NA EUV projection camera.