Grazing incidence pumping (GRIP) is a scheme to produce x-ray lasers and extreme ultraviolet lithography is a means of lithographic production which requires soft x-rays with a bandwidth of 2% centred at 13,5 nm. In this work firstly a grazing incidence pumping of Ni-like Mo and Ne-like Ti x-ray laser media were simulated by using EHYBRID and a post-processor code coupled to it. The required atomic data were obtained from the Cowan code. Besides, the timing issue needed for amplification purpose in a Ti:Sapphire laser system has been described theoretically. Afterwards, in order to produce soft x-ray lasers for extreme ultraviolet lithographic applications, emission of soft x-rays in the 2% bandwidth centred at 13.5 nm emitted from Sn XII and Sn XIII ions were simulated by using the EHYBRID code for a laser operating at 1064 nm with 1 J of pulse energy and 6 ns of pulse duration. The intensity range that has been investigated is between 1-5 x 1012 W/cm2. Ion fractions of tin ions and line intensities corresponding to different electron temperatures were calculated by using the collisional radiative code NeF.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-102).

The recent development of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) sources has increased the need for diagnostic tools, and has opened up a previously limited portion of the spectrum. With ultrafast laser systems and spectroscopy moving into shorter timescales and wavelengths, the need for nanosecond scale imaging of EUV is increasing. EUV’s high absorption has limited the number of imaging options due to the many atomic resonances in this spectrum. Currently EUV is imaged with photodiodes and X-ray CCDs. However photodiodes are limited in that they can only resolve intensity with respect to time and X-ray CCDs are limited to temporal resolution in the microsecond range. This work shows a novel approach to imaging EUV light over a nanosecond time scale, by using an EUV scintillator to convert EUV to visible light imaged by a conventional streak camera. A laser produced plasma, using a mass-limited tin based target, provided EUV light which was imaged by a grazing incidence flat field spectrometer onto a Ce:YAG scintillator. The EUV spectrum (5 nm-20 nm) provided by the spectrometer is filter by a zirconium filter and then converted by the scintillator to visible light (550 nm) which can then be imaged with conventional optics. Visible light was imaged by an electron image tube based streak camera. The streak camera converts the visible light image to an electron image using a photocathode, and sweeps the image across a recording medium. The streak camera also provides amplification and gating of the image by the means of a micro channel plate, within the image tube, to compensate for low EUV intensities. The system provides 42 ns streaked images of light with a iii temporal resolution of 440 ps at a repetition rate of 1 Hz. Upon calibration the EUV streak camera developed in this work will be used in future EUV development.