A system and method for the precise and uniform material removal or delayering of a large area of a sample is provided. The size of the milled area is controllable, ranging from sub-millimeter to multi-millimeter scale and the depth resolution is controllable on the nanometer scale. A controlled singularly charged ion beam is scanned across the sample surface in such a manner to normalize the ion density distribution from the sample center toward the periphery to realize uniform delayering.

A particle beam system and, such as a multi-beam particle microscope, can have a current intensity of individual particle beams that is flexibly set over large value ranges without structural modifications. The particle beam system can include a condenser lens system, a pre-multi-lens array with a specific pre-counter electrode and a pre-multi-aperture plate, and a multi-lens array. The system can includes a controller to supply adjustable excitations to the condenser lens system and the pre-counter electrode so that the charged particles are incident on the pre-multi-aperture plate in telecentric manner.

A beam irradiation device that irradiates a plurality of electron beams includes a multibeam optical system that emits the plurality of beams to be irradiated on a target; and a controller that controls an irradiation state of each of the plurality of beams in accordance with change in a relative position between the target and the multibeam optical system, and based on the irradiation state of a first beam of the plurality of beams, controls the irradiation state of a second beam of the plurality of beams.

According to the present invention, writing data capable of suppressing a data amount and a calculation amount in a multi charged particle beam writing apparatus is generated from design data including a figure having a curve. The present embodiment relates to a writing data generating method for generating writing data used in a multi charged particle beam writing apparatus. The method includes calculating a pair of curves each representing a curve portion of a figure included in design data, the curves each being defined by a plurality of control points, and generating the writing data by expressing a position of a second control point adjacent in a traveling direction of the curve to a first control point of the plurality of control points as a displacement from the first control point in the traveling direction of the curve and a displacement from the first control point in a direction orthogonal to the traveling direction.

Disclosed are a charged particle beam apparatus and a sample processing observation method, the method including: a sample piece formation process in which a sample is irradiated with a focused ion beam such that a sample piece is cut out from the sample; a cross-section processing process in which the sample piece support holds the sample piece and a cross section thereof is irradiated with the ion beam to process the cross section; a sample piece approach movement process in which the sample piece support holds the sample piece and the sample piece is moved to a position that is closer to an electron beam column than an intersection point of beam optical axes of the ion beam and an electron beam is; and a SEM image acquisition process in which the cross section is irradiated with the electron beam to acquire the SEM image of the cross section.

A miller, a non-transitory computer readable medium, and a method. The miller may include an ion beam column that may be configured to form a vertical surface in an object by applying a milling process that may include forming a vertical surface by irradiating, for a certain period of time, an area of an upper surface of an object by a defocused ion beam that comprises multiple rays. During the certain period of time and at a plane of the upper surface of the object, a majority of the multiple rays are closer to an edge of the defocused ion beam than to a center of the defocused ion beam. The focal plane of the defocused ion beam is located below the upper surface of the object.

To provide, in observation of a sample that requires a movement between various devices, a charged particle beam device, a method for processing the sample, and an observation method which facilitate the movement between the devices. The charged particle beam device that processes an observation target on the sample using a charged particle beam includes: a sample stage on which the sample is placed; an observation unit configured to observe the observation target; and a writing unit configured to write information of the observation target in a writing position of the sample.

Embodiments described herein relate to methods of forming gratings with different slant angles on a substrate and forming gratings with different slant angles on successive substrates using angled etch systems. The methods include positioning portions of substrates retained on a platen in a path of an ion beam. The substrates have a grating material disposed thereon. The ion beam is configured to contact the grating material at an ion beam angle θ relative to a surface normal of the substrates and form gratings in the grating material. The substrates are rotated about an axis of the platen resulting in rotation angles ϕ between the ion beam and a surface normal of the gratings. The gratings have slant angles θ′ relative to the surface normal of the substrates. The rotation angles ϕ selected by an equation ϕ=cos.sup.−1(tan(θ′)/tan(θ)).

A particle beam apparatus includes an object table configured to hold a semiconductor substrate; a particle beam source configured to generate a particle beam; a detector configured to detect a response of the substrate caused by interaction of the particle beam with the substrate and to output a detector signal representative of the response; and a processing unit configured to: receive or determine a location of one or more defect target areas on the substrate; control the particle beam source to inspect the one or more defect target areas; identify one or more defects within the one or more defect target areas, based on the detector signal obtained during the inspection of the one or more defect target areas; control the particle beam source to repair the one or more defects.

An ion implanter includes a beam generator that generates anion beam, a beam scanner that performs reciprocating scan with the ion beam in a first direction, a platen driving device that performs reciprocating motion of a wafer in a second direction perpendicular to the first direction, while holding the wafer so that a wafer processing surface is irradiated with the ion beam subject to the reciprocating scan, and a control device that changes a beam scan speed in the first direction and a wafer motion speed in the second direction in accordance with a beam irradiation position in the first direction and the second direction at which the wafer processing surface is irradiated with the ion beam so that ions having a desired two-dimensional non-uniform dose distribution are implanted into the wafer processing surface.