ARCNL groups receive OTP grant

In December, the groups of Peter Kraus and Stefan Witte received an Open Technology Programme (OTP) grant for the project ‘Ultrafast metrology of semiconductor nanostructures with a next-generation table-top soft-X-ray source.’ The total project volume amounts to 1.207.498 euro.

Research plans
Ultrafast coherent table-top soft-X-ray sources based on high-harmonic generation – the up-conversion of many infrared photons into one soft-X-ray photon – are moving beyond the state of academic laboratory sources and can find their way into industrial applications.
In this project Peter Kraus and his team intend to build a high-flux soft-X-ray source based on high-harmonic generation and they will explore applications in the semiconductor industry by employing novel metrology schemes on periodic and non-periodic structures. These schemes will enable to perform lensless imaging with broadband element-specific soft-X-ray pulses with sub-10 nm resolution, measure oxide or other material layers on top of structures, and detect the formation of electrical contacts between these layers in integrated circuits in a non-contact way by ultrafast metrology that monitors carrier dynamics in the contacts on femtosecond time scales.

The unique source and beamline developments will serve as a nucleus for future femto- to attosecond spectroscopy, metrology and imaging initiatives at ARCNL. These will deepen the semiconductor and imaging research at ARCNL and at the same time enable new scientific areas such as ultrafast x-ray spectroscopy of magnetic and correlated materials or even imaging of biological specimen.

Open Technology Programme (OTP)
NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences is responsible for the Open Technology Programme. The OTP is open to excellent research aimed at the possible implementation of the results. The programme offers companies and other organizations an easily accessible way of becoming involved in scientific research that leads to usable knowledge.