The objective of the present invention is to maintain the surrounding of a sample at atmospheric pressure and efficiently detect secondary electrons. In a sample chamber of a charged particle device, a sample holder (4) has: a gas introduction pipe and a gas evacuation pipe for controlling the vicinity of a sample (20) to be an atmospheric pressure environment; a charged particle passage hole (18) and a micro-orifice (18) enabling detection of secondary electrons (15) emitted from the sample (20), co-located above the sample (20); and a charged particle passage hole (19) with a hole diameter larger than the micro-orifice (18) above the sample (20) so as to be capable of actively evacuating gas during gas introduction.

The purpose of the present invention is to provide a charged particle beam device with which it is possible to minimize the beam irradiation amount while maintaining a high measurement success rate. The present invention is a charged particle beam device provided with a control device for controlling a scan deflector on the basis of selection of a predetermined number n of frames, wherein the control device controls the scan deflector so that a charged particle beam is selectively scanned on a portion on a sample corresponding to a pixel satisfying a predetermined condition or a region including the portion on the sample from an image obtained by scanning the charged particle beam for a number m of frames (m≧1), the number m of frames being smaller than the number n of frames.

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 present disclosure relates to an apparatus and methods for generating a hybrid image by high-dynamic-range counting. In an embodiment, the apparatus includes a processing circuitry configured to acquire an image from a pixelated detector, obtain a sparsity map of the acquired image, the sparsity map indicating low-flux regions of the acquired image and high-flux regions of the acquired image, generate a low-flux image and a high-flux image based on the sparsity map, perform event analysis of the acquired image based on the low-flux image and the high-flux image, the event analysis including detecting, within the low-flux image, incident events by an event counting mode, multiply, by a normalization constant, resulting intensities of the high-flux image and the detected incident events of the low-flux image, and generate the hybrid image by merging the low-flux image and the high-flux image.

A secondary projection imaging system in a multi-beam apparatus is proposed, which makes the secondary electron detection with high collection efficiency and low cross-talk. The system employs one zoom lens, one projection lens and one anti-scanning deflection unit. The zoom lens and the projection lens respectively perform the zoom function and the anti-rotating function to remain the total imaging magnification and the total image rotation with respect to the landing energies and/or the currents of the plural primary beamlets. The anti-scanning deflection unit performs the anti-scanning function to eliminate the dynamic image displacement due to the deflection scanning of the plural primary beamlets.

In order to measure a 3D profile of a pattern formed on a sample obtained by stacking a plurality of different materials, for each of materials constituting the pattern, an attenuation coefficient μ indicating a probability of an electron being scattered at a unit distance in the material previously stored, an interface position where different materials are in contact, upper and bottom surface positions of the pattern in a BSE image are extracted, and a depth from the upper surface position to a specified position of the pattern is calculated based on a ratio nIh of a contrast between the specified position and the bottom surface position of the pattern to a contrast between the upper and bottom surface positions of the pattern in the BSE image, an attenuation coefficient of a material at the bottom and specified positions of the pattern.

A multi-beam apparatus for observing a sample with high resolution and high throughput and in flexibly varying observing conditions is proposed. The apparatus uses a movable collimating lens to flexibly vary the currents of the plural probe spots without influencing the intervals thereof, a new source-conversion unit to form the plural images of the single electron source and compensate off-axis aberrations of the plural probe spots with respect to observing conditions, and a pre-beamlet-forming means to reduce the strong Coulomb effect due to the primary-electron beam.

Provided is a charged particle beam apparatus capable of estimating an internal device structure of a sample. The charged particle beam apparatus includes an electron beam optical system, a detector, and a calculator. The electron beam optical system irradiates a plurality of irradiation points on a sample, which are different in position or time, with an electron beam. The detector detects electrons emitted from the sample in response to irradiation of the electron beam by the electron beam optical system. The calculator calculates a dependence relationship between the irradiation points based on the electrons detected by the detector at the plurality of irradiation points.

To provide a technique capable of measuring high-frequency electrical noise in a charged particle beam device. A charged particle beam device 100 includes an electron source 2 for generating an electron beam EB1, a stage 4 for mounting a sample 10, a detector 5 for detecting secondary electrons EB2 emitted from the sample 10, and a control unit 7 electrically connected to the electron source 2, the stage 4, and the detector 5 and can control the electron source 2, the stage 4, and the detector 5. Here, when the sample 10 is mounted on the stage 4, and a specific portion 11 of the sample 10 is continuously irradiated with the electron beam EB1 from the electron source 2, the control unit 7 can calculate a time-series change in irradiation position of the electron beam EB1 based on an amount of the secondary electrons EB2 emitted from the specific portion 11, and can calculate a feature quantity for a shake of the electron beam EB1 based on the time-series change in irradiation position. Further, the feature quantity includes a frequency spectrum.

Systems and methods are provided for compensating dispersion of a beam separator in a single-beam or multi-beam apparatus. Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a dispersion device comprising an electrostatic deflector and a magnetic deflector configured to induce a beam dispersion set to cancel the dispersion generated by the beam separator. The combination of the electrostatic deflector and the magnetic deflector can be used to keep the deflection angle due to the dispersion device unchanged when the induced beam dispersion is changed to compensate for a change in the dispersion generated by the beam separator. In some embodiments, the deflection angle due to the dispersion device can be controlled to be zero and there is no change in primary beam axis due to the dispersion device.