Integrated Sealing Ring Structure for Leak-Tight Lithography Mounting
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Solution Overview
Problem
EUV lithography apparatuses face challenges in maintaining fluid-tight seals due to the high absorption of light by most materials, requiring reflective optical units, and existing sealing methods struggle with centring and yielding volume, leading to potential leaks during operation and over the lifetime.
Innovation Solution
A sealing device comprising multiple sealing rings connected through connection locations, with a trefoiled inner contour design that provides a yielding volume for pressing and centring, ensuring a fluid-tight seal by integrating the sealing rings into a single component made from a plastics material like perfluoro rubber.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If sealing rings are kept separate to provide yielding volume for pressing, then sealing function is maintained, but mounting complexity increases and centring is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple sealing rings are integrally connected to form a single sealing device with a continuous sealing surface. The sealing rings are connected at connection locations to create an integral structure that maintains sealing functionality while simplifying mounting to a single operation, eliminating the need to handle and position multiple separate sealing rings.
Solution Approach 2:
The sealing device is divided into multiple sealing rings that are integrally connected at specific connection locations. This segmentation allows the sealing surface to conform to the component geometry while maintaining structural integrity through the connections, enabling both yielding volume for pressing and simplified mounting.
2Reliability
If yielding volume is provided between seal and component, then sealing function is maintained, but space for good centring is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The inner contour of the sealing device features locally varying geometries with different radii of curvature at different locations. These local geometric variations provide centring functionality at specific areas while maintaining yielding volume at other areas, allowing both centring precision and sealing function to coexist through spatially differentiated design.
3Reliability
If multiple separate sealing rings are used, then yielding volume is available, but mounting is more complex
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple sealing rings are integrally connected to form a single sealing device that can be mounted in one operation. The integral connection eliminates the need to separately position and secure multiple sealing rings, significantly simplifying the mounting process while maintaining the yielding volume necessary for reliable sealing.
4Ease of manufacture
If sealing rings are integrally connected, then mounting is simplified, but flexibility for yielding is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The sealing device combines integral connection at specific locations with segmented sealing regions. The connection locations provide structural integrity for simplified mounting, while the sealed-off regions maintain flexibility and yielding volume for reliable sealing, achieving both mounting simplicity and sealing reliability through a hybrid structure.
Data Source
Figure 1A
Figure 1B
Figure 2
AI summary
Sealing device (300) for sealing a first component part (202) of a lithography apparatus (100A, 100B) vis-a-vis a multiplicity of second component parts (206) of the lithography apparatus (100A, 100B), comprising a multiplicity of sealing rings (302), and a multiplicity of connection locations (304), wherein the sealing rings (302) are connected to one another with the aid of the connection locations (304).