Extreme Lithography & Materials Innovation Center

The LEEPS project, led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will develop a compact high energy thulium-doped yttrium fluoride lithium (Tm: YLF) crystals laser driver capable of producing high repetition rate (HRR) bursts of >-J pulses with arbitrary pulse shapes of ns–μs duration. They will perform calibrated measurements of EUV emission at λ ≈ .-nm and shorter wavelengths using optimal lasing conditions for maximum conversion efficiency. The same laser driver can produce sub-picosecond, ultrahigh intensity pulses through chirped pulse amplification to be used for high energy plasma sources such as relativistic electron acceleration and hard x-rays generation.

FEATURES

LEEPS will use the Tm: YLF crystals laser driver at λ ≈  μm with unprecedented high power to execute experiments backed by detailed simulations to understand laser-matter interaction physics to enable HRR experimental plasma science studies.

Project Deliverables

1. Install Tm:YLF laser driver >1 J pulses at >ns and <ps duration at Jupiter Laser Facility (JLF) 

2. Execute simulations to understand λ ≈ 2 μm laser-matter interaction physics

3. Optimize EUV emission with temporally-shaped pulses

4. Generate relativistic electrons and MeV x-rays using high intensity pulses

Tm:YLF-based drivers have strong advantages for driving future efficient and higher power EUV sources

Tm:YLF based laser systems for EUV lithography

• CE into in-band EUV photons using 2μm laser driver on par with 10μm CO2 laser driver1

• EUV production by 2μm laser produced plasma with 5% eff. demonstrated2

• Wall-plug to EUV efficiency ~ few % is feasible

• Scalable to high energy and power

• Arbitrary pulse shaping for plasma coupling  optimization

• Driver for HHG and metrology sources