The present invention provides an electron beam device suitable for observing the bottom of a deep groove or a deep hole with a high degree of accuracy under a large current condition. The electron beam device has: an electron optical system having an irradiation optical system to irradiate an aperture 153 with an electron beam 116 emitted from an electron source 100 and a reduction projection optical system to project and form an aperture image of the aperture on a sample 114; and a control unit 146 to control a projection magnification of the aperture image of the aperture projected and formed on the sample and an aperture angle 402 of the electron beam emitted to the sample by the electron optical system.

An electron beam device suitable for observing the bottom of a deep groove or hole with a high degree of accuracy under a large current condition includes: an electron optical system having an irradiation optical system to irradiate a first aperture with an electron beam emitted from an electron source and a reduction projection optical system to project and form an aperture image of the first aperture on a sample, detectors to detect secondary electrons emitted by irradiating the sample with the electron beam through the electron optical system. An image processing unit generates a two-dimensional image from detection signals obtained by irradiating the sample while the electron beam scans the sample two-dimensionally by scanning deflectors of the electron optical system. Further, generates a reconstructed image by deconvoluting electron beam intensity distribution information of an ideal aperture image of the first aperture from the generated two-dimensional image information.

A seamless mold manufacturing method of the invention is a seamless mold manufacturing method having the steps of forming a thermal reaction type resist layer on a sleeve-shaped mold, and exposing using a laser and developing the thermal reaction type resist layer and thereby forming a fine mold pattern, and is characterized in that the thermal reaction type resist layer is comprised of a thermal reaction type resist having a property of reacting in predetermined light intensity or more in a light intensity distribution in a spot diameter of the laser.

A method, computer program product and a system for imaging an area that includes an upper surface and hole. The method may include acquiring, by a charged particle imager, a first image of a first type of electrons of the area while the charged particle imager is at a first configuration; acquiring, by the charged particle imager, a second image of the first type of electrons of the area and a first image of a second type of electrons of the area while the charged particle imager is at a second configuration that differs from the first configuration; and generating a hybrid image of the area based on (i) a first image of the first type of electrons of the upper surface, (ii) an inter-image offset, and (iii) a first image of the second type of electrons of the bottom of the hole.

The present invention has an object to provide a scanning electron microscope which suppresses a potential gradient produced by preliminary charge without changing lens conditions of an electron microscope. As an aspect to achieve the above object, there is proposed a scanning electron microscope in which a scanning deflector is controlled so that a second beam is scanned to detect electrons released from a sample after scanning a first beam on the sample to charge the surface of the sample and the first beam is scanned so that charge density in a surrounding part within a scanned area by the first beam is increased relatively as compared with a center part within the scanned area by the first beam.

A pattern measuring device ensures highly accurately measuring a depth and a three-dimensional shape irrespective of a formation accuracy of a deep trench and/or a deep hole. Therefore, in the present invention, the measuring system detects backscattered electrons from a pattern caused by an irradiation, compares backscattered electron signal intensities from a top surface, a bottom surface, and a sidewall of the pattern, and calculates a three-dimensional shape (or height information) of the sidewall based on a difference in heights of the top surface and the lower surface. The measuring system compares the calculated three-dimensional shape of the sidewall with a three-dimensional shape of the sidewall estimated based on an intensity distribution (open angle) of a primary electron beam, corrects the estimated three-dimensional shape of the sidewall based on a difference in the comparison, and corrects until the difference in the comparison becomes an acceptable value.

A method of inspecting patterns formed the manufacturing of semiconductor devices or the like includes producing an image of the patterns, producing a boundary image including a plurality of boundary patterns corresponding to first and second boundaries of each of the patterns, combining the pattern image and the boundary image to produce an overlapping image including overlapping patterns in which the patterns fill regions between the boundary patterns, and binarizing the overlapping image to produce a binary image including binary patterns corresponding to the overlapping patterns.

There is provided a charged particle beam apparatus including: a charged particle source; a condenser lens and an object lens for converging a charged particle beam from the charged particle source and irradiating the converged charged particle beam to a specimen; and plural image shift deflectors for deflecting the charged particle beam. In the charged particle beam apparatus, the deflection of the charged particle beam is controlled using first control parameters that set the optical axis of a charged particle beam to a first optical axis that passes through the center of the object lens and enters a predefined position of the specimen, and second control parameters that transform the first control parameters so that the first control parameters set the optical axis of the charged particle beam to a second optical axis having a predefined incident angle different from the incident angle of the first optical axis.

The objective of the present invention is to provide a charged particle beam device for setting, from an image of a trench-like groove or a pit, device conditions for finding a hole or the like provided in the trench or the pit, or measuring a hole or the like provided inside the trench or the like with high accuracy. In the present invention, a charged particle beam device comprises: a deflector for causing a charged particle beam emitted from a charged particle source to perform a scan; a detector for detecting a charged particle obtained on the basis of the scanning of the charged particle beam; and a computation processing device for generating an image on the basis of the output of the detector. In the charged particle beam device, the computation processing device specifies, from within the generated image, a relatively dark region with respect to other parts thereof, and controls the deflector in such a manner that the charged particle beam selectively scans a sample position corresponding to the dark region.

Even in a case where a disturbance is applied from an adjacently disposed power supply circuit or the like, in order to realize a reduction in ripple, a high-voltage power supply device is configured to include a drive circuit, a transformer that boosts an output voltage of the drive circuit, a boost circuit that further boosts a voltage boosted by the transformer, a shield that covers the transformer and the boost circuit, a filter circuit that filters, smoothes, and outputs a high voltage output from the boost circuit, and an impedance loop circuit configured by connection of a plurality of impedance elements into a loop shape. A grounding point of the boost circuit, a grounding point of the shield, and a grounding point of the filter circuit are configured to be grounded via the impedance loop circuit, and this is applied to a high-voltage power supply unit that applies a high voltage to an electron gun of a charged particle beam apparatus.