Simulation of EUV multilayer mirror buried defects

A new interface has been created to link existing deposition/etching and electromagnetic simulation software, allowing the user to program deposition and etching conditions and then find the reflective properties of the resultant structure. The application studied in this paper is the problem of three-dimensional defects which become buried during fabrication of multilayer mirrors for extreme ultraviolet lithography. The software link reads in surface information in the form of licked triangles, determines all nodes within the triangles, and then creates nodes lying between triangles of different layers to create a 3-dimensional inhomogeneous matrix containing the materials' indices of refraction. This allows etching and depositions to be input into SAMPLE-3D, a multi-surface topology to be generated, and then the electromagnetic properties of the structure to be assessed with TEMPEST. This capability was used to study substrate defects in multilayer mirrors by programming a defect and then sputter-depositing some forty layers on top of the defect. Specifically examined was how the topography depended on sputter conditions and determined the defects' impact on the mirrors' imaging properties. While this research was focused on application to EUV lithography, the general technique may be extended to other optical processes such as alignment and mask defects.