| Citation: | DONG Zhu-jun, ZHANG Ran-ran, ZHOU Yi-ping, ZENG Wen-bin, ZHAO Chong-xiao, HUANG Pan, GUO Jin, CHEN Fei, PAN Qi-kun. Research on RF waveguide CO2 laser amplification technology[J]. Chinese Optics. doi: 10.37188/CO.2025-0113
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Toward the application demand for high-power, high-beam-quality CO2 seed lasers in extreme ultraviolet lithography light sources, the amplification characteristics were investigated based on a RF waveguide architecture. The static insertion loss and output beam quality of the RF waveguide amplifier were measured as function of incident beam parameters. A numerical model was developed to simulate the multi-stage RF waveguide amplification and to evaluate the effects of the gas pressure and the discharge pumping power on gain. The technology of regulating with gain medium was implemented to optimize the amplification performance in the experiment. Experimentally, optimal mode-matching conditions were identified with a waveguide length of 2.5 m, yielding a transmission efficiency of 91.4%. The beam quality factors of the output beam in the horizontal and vertical directions were 1.03 and 1.05, respectively. An overall gain factor of 68× was achieved in a dual-stage RF waveguide amplifier. The system delivered CO2 laser emission with a repetition rate of 50 kHz, a pulse duration of 20 ns, and an average output power of 17.1 W, satisfying the design criteria and demonstrating its suitability for high-power, high-beam-quality seed laser applications.
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