Exploring interactions between hydrogen plasma and construction materials

With increasing source powers the interaction between so called EUV-generated hydrogen plasma and construction materials of EUV lithography machines becomes more important. Here we present an experimental study on the interaction between EUV photons and/or hydrogen plasma with a selected construction material, aluminium. In a series of experiments performed in off-line plasma setups we investigated hydrogen induced outgassing (HIO) processes from aluminium. Various techniques like X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, Time-off-flight Secondary Ions Mass Spectroscopy, and Hydrogen Forward Scattering are used to track changes in aluminium.