In one embodiment, a charged particle beam writing apparatus includes a blanking circuit applying a blanking voltage to a blanking deflector, a stage on which a substrate is placed, a mark on the stage, a detector detecting an irradiation position of the charged particle beam based on irradiation of the mark with the charged particle beam, and a diagnostic electric circuitry that causes the charged particle beam to enter a predetermined defocused state relative to the mark, obtains a difference between a first irradiation position when the mark is scanned under first irradiation conditions and a second irradiation position when the mark is scanned under second irradiation conditions in which at least either of irradiation time and settling time in the first irradiation conditions is varied, and determines occurrence of a failure of the blanking circuit when the difference is a predetermined value or more.

A multiple charged particle beam writing apparatus includes a circuitry to calculate, for each of the plurality of combinations, a first distribution coefficient for each of the three beams configuring the combination concerned, for distributing a dose to irradiate the design grid concerned to the three beams such that the gravity center position of each distributed dose coincides with the position of the design grid concerned and the sum of the each distributed dose coincides with the dose to irradiate the design grid concerned; and a circuitry to calculate, for each of the four or more beams, a second distribution coefficient of each of the four or more beams relating to the design grid concerned by dividing the total value of at least one first distribution coefficient corresponding to the beam concerned in the four or more beams by the number of the plurality of combinations.

An electron beam irradiation apparatus includes a first electrode being annular, arranged along the optical axis of the electron beam, at the downstream from the deflector, and in the magnetic field of the objective lens, to which a first potential being positive is variably applied, a second electrode being annular, arranged in the magnetic field of the objective lens and between the deflector and the first electrode, to which a second potential being positive and higher than the first potential is applied, and a third electrode being annular, arranged in the magnetic field of the objective lens and to be opposite to the second electrode with respect to the first electrode, to which a third potential lower than the first potential is applied.

A low noise blanking unit corresponds to a wide range of acceleration voltages (from several times higher than related voltages to low acceleration voltages) of an electron beam. A blanking unit of the measurement and inspection device includes a blanking control circuit, in which (i) an upper and a lower blanking electrodes are arranged in the irradiation direction of an electron beam; electrodes on the reverse sides of two opposing electrodes in each of the blanking electrodes arranged in the same direction are connected with the ground, (ii) when blanking is ON, positive voltages are output to remaining electrodes of the upper blanking electrode and negative voltages are output to remaining electrodes of the lower blanking electrode, and (iii) when the blanking is OFF, the same ground reference signal is output to the remaining electrodes of the upper blanking electrode and to the remaining electrodes of the lower blanking electrode.

A method for projecting a particle beam onto a substrate, the method includes a step of calculating a correction of the scattering effects of the beam by means of a point spread function modelling the forward scattering effects of the particles; a step of modifying a dose profile of the beam, implementing the correction thus calculated; and a step of projecting the beam, the dose profile of which has been modified, onto the substrate, and being wherein the point spread function is, or comprises by way of expression of a linear combination, a two-dimensional double sigmoid function. A method to e-beam lithography is also provided.

A method for mask process correction or forming a pattern on a reticle using charged particle beam lithography is disclosed, where the reticle is to be used in an optical lithographic process to form a pattern on a wafer, where sensitivity of the wafer pattern is calculated with respect to changes in dimension of the reticle pattern, and where pattern exposure information is modified to increase edge slope of the reticle pattern where sensitivity of the wafer pattern is high. A method for fracturing or mask data preparation is also disclosed, where pattern exposure information is determined that can form a pattern on a reticle using charged particle beam lithography, where the reticle is to be used in an optical lithographic process to form a pattern on a wafer, and where sensitivity of the wafer pattern is calculated with respect to changes in dimension of the reticle pattern.

According to one aspect of the present invention, a charged particle beam apparatus includes fogging charged particle amount distribution operation processing circuitry that operates a fogging charged particle amount distribution by performing convolution integration of a distribution function in which a design distribution center of fogging charged particles is shifted and a exposure intensity distribution in which a design irradiation center of a charged particle beam is not shifted; positional displacement operation processing circuitry that operates a positional displacement based on the fogging charged particle amount distribution; correction processing circuitry that corrects an irradiation position using the positional displacement; and a charged particle beam column including an emission source that emits the charged particle beam and a deflector that deflects the charged particle beam to irradiate a corrected irradiation position with the charged particle beam.

A charged particle beam writing apparatus includes an area density calculation unit to calculate a pattern area density weighted using a dose modulation value, which has previously been input from an outside and in which an amount of correction of a dimension variation due to a proximity effect has been included, a fogging correction dose coefficient calculation unit to calculate a fogging correction dose coefficient for correcting a dimension variation due to a fogging effect by using the pattern area density weighted using the dose modulation value having been input from the outside, a dose calculation unit to calculates a dose of a charged particle beam by using the fogging correction dose coefficient and the dose modulation value, and a writing unit to write a pattern on a target object with the charged particle beam of the dose.

A charged particle beam writing method includes acquiring the deviation amount of the deflection position per unit tracking deflection amount with respect to each tracking coefficient of a plurality of tracking coefficients having been set for adjusting the tracking amount to shift the deflection position of a charged particle beam on the writing target substrate in order to follow movement of the stage on which the writing target substrate is placed, extracting a tracking coefficient based on which the deviation amount of the deflection position per the unit tracking deflection amount is closest to zero among the plurality of tracking coefficients, and writing a pattern on the writing target substrate with the charged particle beam while performing tracking control in which the tracking amount has been adjusted using the tracking coefficient extracted.

According to one aspect of the present invention, a method of correcting a position of a stage mechanism, includes generating a two-dimensional map of a distortion amount at a position of a stage by applying a distortion amount of a position in a first direction of the stage at each of measured positions in a second direction as a distortion amount of a position in the first direction of the stage at each position in the second direction at each position in the first direction and by applying a distortion amount of a position in the second direction of the stage at each of measured positions in the first direction as a distortion amount of a position in the second direction of the stage at each position in the first direction at each position in the second direction; and correcting position data by using the two-dimensional map.