A particle beam system includes a particle source to produce a first beam of charged particles. The particle beam system also includes a multiple beam producer to produce a plurality of partial beams from a first incident beam of charged particles. The partial beams are spaced apart spatially in a direction perpendicular to a propagation direction of the partial beams. The plurality of partial beams includes at least a first partial beam and a second partial beam. The particle beam system further includes an objective to focus incident partial beams in a first plane so that a first region, on which the first partial beam is incident in the first plane, is separated from a second region, on which a second partial beam is incident. The particle beam system also a detector system including a plurality of detection regions and a projective system.

Mask-modulated spectra are incident to a sensor and are summed during a frame time. After the frame time, a compressed spectrum is read out based on the sum and decompressed to obtain spectra for some or all specimen locations. The mask-modulated spectrum that are summed are associated with different modulations produced by a common mask.

Aspects of the present disclosure provide an apparatus comprising a primary beam column configured to direct a primary beam of energetic particles onto a location of interest on a sample containing one or more integrated circuit structures, a detector configured to produce a signal in response to detection of secondary charged particles generated as a result of an interaction between the primary beam of energetic particles and the location of interest, and a signal processor coupled to the detector configured to measure the transient behavior of generation of the secondary charged particles from the signal produced by the detector, and a characterizing module configured to characterize the location of interest by comparing the measured transient behavior to a predetermined reference transient behavior. The detector has a response that is fast enough to detect a transient behavior of generation of the secondary charged particles.

A detection module that includes a readout circuit and detector having a group of sensing elements. The group is configured to detect multiple beams. The multiple beams resulted from an illumination of a substrate, by an illumination module, by multiple electron beams. The readout circuit is configured to: (a) receive selection information for selecting multiple selected sub-groups of sensing elements; wherein the group of sensing elements comprises, in addition to the multiple selected sub-groups of sensing elements, a plurality of non-selected sensing elements; (b) ignore detection signals provided from the plurality of non-selected sensing elements, and (c) generate, for each selected sub-group of sensing elements, a sensing result to provide multiple sensing results that correspond to the multiple beams; and wherein the selected sub-groups of sensing elements are selected in response to at least one working condition of the illumination module.

When an electrode (29) such as a grid applied with a negative voltage is installed in front of an objective lens (23), low energy electrons among secondary electrons (25) generated from a sample (24) by an electron beam or the like is reflected by the electrode to come into a detector (22) installed in the sample (24) side, while electrons of higher energy are not detected, since they are not reflected by the electrode. Accordingly, since only the electrons of lower energy of the secondary electrons can be detected by discriminating the secondary electrons by the energy, it is possible to obtain a detection signal, e.g., rich in the information on the surface state of the sample.

A method of calculating an electronic state of a material by using a calculation device, wherein the calculation device sets a set containing, as elements, a plurality of operation models, where each of operation models provides an approximate solution to the electronic state of the material, determines an optimized operation model that are close in distance in a space formed by the set while defining a direction in which the calculated self-consistent solutions of the effective Hamiltonian of an electron system continuously change, evaluates a variational energy of the electron system by the self-consistent solution, updates the operation model so that the evaluated variational energy approaches an energy of an exact solution to be calculated and further, so that the variational energy forms a monotonically decreasing convex function, and calculates the exact solution of the electronic state from one or a plurality of variational energy series.

A Transmission Charged-Particle Microscope comprises a source of charged particles which are then directed by an illuminator onto a specimen supported by a specimen holder. Charged particles transmitted through the specimen may undergo energy loss with a distribution of losses providing information about the specimen. A dispersing device disperses the transmitted charged particles into an energy-resolved array of spectral sub-beams distributed along a dispersion direction. The dispersed charged particles are detected by a detector comprising an assembly of sub-detectors arranged along said dispersion direction, whereby different sub-detectors are adjustable to have different detection sensitivities.

A scanning electron microscope includes: a retarding power source configured to apply a retarding voltage to a specimen; a combined objective lens configured to focus the primary beam on a surface of the specimen; an electrostatic deflection system configured to deflect the primary beam to direct the primary beam to each point in a field of view on the surface of the specimen; a first scintillation detector having a first scintillator configured to emit light upon incidence of secondary electrons which have been emitted from the specimen; a Wien filter configured to deflect the secondary electrons in one direction without deflecting the primary beam; and a second scintillation detector having a second scintillator configured to detect the secondary electrons deflected by the Wien filter. The second scintillator has a distal end located away from the axis of the primary beam.

To provide a scanning electron microscope having an electron spectroscopy system to attain high spatial resolution and a high secondary electron detection rate under the condition that energy of primary electrons is low, the scanning electron microscope includes: an objective lens 105; primary electron acceleration means 104 that accelerates primary electrons 102; primary electron deceleration means 109 that decelerates the primary electrons and irradiates them to a sample 106; a secondary electron deflector 103 that deflects secondary electrons 110 from the sample to the outside of an optical axis of the primary electrons; a spectroscope 111 that disperses secondary electrons; and a controller that controls application voltage to the objective lens, the primary electron acceleration means and the primary electron deceleration means so as to converge the secondary electrons to an entrance of the spectroscope.

The disclosure relates to a method of imaging a specimen using a transmission charged particle microscope, said method comprising providing a specimen, and providing a charged particle beam and directing said charged particle beam onto said specimen for generating a flux of charged particles transmitted through the specimen. The method comprises the step of generating and recording a first energy filtered flux of charged particles transmitted through the specimen, wherein said first energy filtered flux of charged particles substantially consists of non-scattered and elastically scattered charged particles. The method as disclosed herein comprises the further step of generating and recording a second energy filtered flux of charged particles transmitted through the specimen, wherein said second energy filtered flux of charged particles substantially consists of inelastically scattered charged particles. Said first and second recorded energy filtered flux are then used for imaging said specimen with increased contrast.