Supervisors: Jom Luiten (Eindhoven University of Technology TU/e) & Peter Smorenburg (ASML)
Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is a young Dutch university with a student population of more than 13000 students. Its campus is in the centre of one of the most powerful technology hubs in the world: Brainport Eindhoven. TU/e stands out globally when it comes to collaborating with advanced industries. Together with other institutions, it is part of a thriving ecosystem with one common aim – to improve quality of life through sustainable innovations.
X-ray analysis is essential for progress in materials science, life sciences and medical diagnostics, and has become indispensable for quality control in industry and for security inspection. The most advanced analytical methods, however, require highly coherent and narrowband X-ray beams with continuously tuneable photon energy, which are only available at synchrotron and X-ray Free Electron Laser facilities. Access to these large-scale facilities is limited and particularly difficult and expensive for industry and obviously not suited for production line control.
In the Smart*Light project we are developing an Inverse Compton Scattering (ICS) source that can generate narrowband X-rays at photon energies continuously tuneable from a few to 40 keV. This extremely compact ICS source will bridge the gap between X-ray laboratory sources and large-scale X-ray facilities. An important potential industrial application is semiconductor wafer inspection by Critical-Dimension Small Angle X-ray Scattering (CD-SAXS).
Recently we successfully commissioned the Smart*Light ICS X-ray source. In a collaboration with ASML we also obtained a state-of-the-art SAXS instrument. The student will join the Smart*Light team to further develop the ICS X-ray source. The challenge ahead is to boost the X-ray flux by several orders of magnitude, which will enable high-volume wafer inspection. These X-ray flux levels will be realized by going to ‘burst mode’ operation, involving the combination of a pulsed thermionic electron gun and storage of high-power femtosecond laser pulses in a stabilized Fabry-Perot cavity, which will be manufactured in a close collaboration with the TU/e Opto-Mechatronics group. Finally, CD-SAXS measurements will be performed on wafers demonstrating the viability of the method.
Expected Results
- Design, build and test a Fabry-Perot cavity for storing high-power fs laser pulses
- Integration of the thermionic gun and the Fabry-Perot cavity into the ICS setup
- Demonstrate high-flux ICS X-ray production
- Use the upgraded Smart*Light ICS setup to perform high-volume CD-SAXS wafer metrology
Planned secondments
- 6 months in high-tech industry (year 2)
