Optical constants of silicon carbide thin films deposited with emerging PVD techniques

Silicon carbide (SiC) is an attractive material for EUV and soft X-ray optics. CVD-deposited silicon carbide (deposited at 1400° C on Si substrate) is the best reflective material in the whole EUV interval (with about the 48% of reflectance at 121.6 nm). Despite of this, SiC thin films deposited with PVD techniques, such as magnetron sputtering, on silicon substrate, do not have the same performances and they undergo to a degradation with time, probably because of some stoichiometry reason (carbon rich). Depositing stable SiC with PVD techniques is crucial in building ML's, like Si/SiC and SiC/Mg for soft X-ray applications (such space telescope and photolithography). We deposited some preliminary samples using the Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) and the Pulsed Electron Deposition (PED) techniques achieving a good reflectance in the whole EUV range (27% at near normal incidence at 121.6 nn) on a silicon substrate. The higher energy involved in these deposition processes could lead to a film with a stoichiometry much closer to the target one. The reflectivity of the deposited films has been measured at the BEAR beamline of the ELETTRA synchrotron in Trieste (Italy) and the optical constants retrieved at six wavelength from 121.6 nm down to 5 nm.