Extreme ultraviolet source using a forced recombination process in lithium plasma generated by a pulsed laser

An extreme ultraviolet source having a tamper has been studied. This target scheme recombines forcedly lithium ions by low temperature electrons from the tamper, converting Li3+ rapidly to excited Li2+ which emit intense 1s-2p Lyman α emissions at 13.5nm. A strong 13.5nm emission appeared at 20–30ns after the time of laser peak within a small space volume near the tamper. The authors obtained an enhancement of extreme ultraviolet conversion efficiency by a factor of about 2 with the tamper against that of a target without the tamper at the same laser irradiation condition.