Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi-High-Technologies Corporation

Hitachi-Science Systems, Ltd.

Hiroshi Miyai

Masahiro Watanabe

Maki Tanaka

Yasuhiko Nara

Takashi Hiroi

Chie Shishido

Asahiro Kuni

Mari Nozoe

Aritoshi Sugimoto

Kenji Watanabe

Yasuhiro Gunji

Taku Ninomiya

Hiroshi Kitaguchi

Shigeru Izumi

Ryuichi Funatsu

Katsutoshi Sato

Yusuke Ominami

Hiroshi Morioka

Yasuko Aoki

Yukiya Hattori

Hiroyuki Shinada

Shigeya Tanaka

Masaaki Nojiri

Mitsunobu Isobe

Takehiko Konno

Keiichi Saiki

Yuji Takagi

Makoto Suzuki

Akira Shimase

Dai Fujii

Seishi Watahiki

Masahiro Kondo

Koichi Hayakawa

Norimasa Nishimura

Michio Nakano

Shoji Kamata

Takako Fujisawa

Munenori Fukunishi

Mitsuru Okamura

There is provided a substrate inspection device which uses a charged particle beam and is capable of more quickly extracting a defect candidate than ever before. The configuration of the substrate inspection device is such that a substrate having a circuit pattern is irradiated with a primary charged particle beam, the substrate is moved at a constant speed or at an increasing or a decreasing speed, a position resulting from the movement is monitored, the position of irradiation with the primary charged particle beam is controlled according to the coordinates of the substrate, an image in a partial region on the substrate is captured at a speed lower than the velocity of the movement, a defect candidate is detected based on the captured image, and the detected defect candidate is displayed in a map format.

Charged particle beam device for scanning a sample using a charged particle beam to inspect the sample

Provided is a pattern inspection apparatus including: a charge formation means which forms charge on a surface of a substrate () by generating an electron beam from a second electron source () which is different from an electron source () which generates an electron beam before irradiating an electron beam (), a current measuring means () which measures a value of current flowing in the substrate while the charge is formed on the surface of the substrate by the charge formation means; and an adjustment means () which adjusts the charge formed by the charge formation means so that the value of the current measured by the current measuring means is a predetermined target value. Provided is also a pattern inspection method which uses the pattern inspection apparatus. Thus, it is possible to easily set an optimal condition of precharge executed before inspection of a pattern formed by a semiconductor apparatus manufacturing process and automatically inspection whether the precharge is good. Then, the inspection result is fed back to the operation afterward. This prevents lowering of the reliability of the inspection result and always enables a stable inspection.

Pattern check device and pattern check method

The present invention provides an appearance inspection apparatus that allows a user to give precedence to either defect detection performance or throughput. The appearance inspection apparatus allows a user to select the frequency of a digital image signal or the ratio of the frequency of the digital image signal to a sampling rate. Further, a user is allowed to select either throughput improvement or S/N improvement to prioritize.

Appearance inspection apparatus with scanning electron microscope and image data processing method using scanning electron microscope

An inspection system uses a scanning electron microscope that detects a high-precision electron beam image, and at the same time removes restrictions for a low sampling rate. A sampled signal is obtained by sampling an analog brightness signal generated by a secondary electron detector at a predetermined sampling rate, and contiguous digital values contained in the sampled signal are added on an N by N digital value basis to generate a digital brightness signal whose frequency is equal to 1/N of the sampling frequency. Each, digital value contained in the digital brightness signal is divided by N to generate a digital signal made of digital values having a number of bits equal to that of the sampled signal and to generate an image signal in which each digital value of the digital signal forms one pixel data.

Electron beam inspection system and an image generation method for an electron beam inspection system

A pattern inspection apparatus has a setting unit of a plurality of cell areas A and B of different cell comparison pitches and inspects the plurality of cell areas of the different cell comparison pitches in accordance with settings of the setting unit. As information to read out image data for an inspection image and a reference image from an image memory, in addition to position information of a defective image, identification information showing either a cell comparison or a die comparison and relative position information of the reference image can be set. The apparatus also has a unit for setting a plurality of inspection threshold values every inspection area and inspects a plurality of inspection areas by the plurality of inspection threshold values.

Inspection apparatus for inspecting patterns of a substrate

A visual inspection apparatus and method using the scanning electron microscope are disclosed. An electron beam is scanned repeatedly on a sample, and an inspection and a reference image are generated by the secondary electrons generated from the sample or reflected electrons. From the differential image between the inspection image and the reference image, a defect is determined. The number of pixels in the generated image along the direction of repetitive scanning by the electron beam can be changed.

Inspection apparatus and inspection method using electron beam

An inspection system includes a SEM visual inspection apparatus for detecting a defect in a semiconductor sample in steps of manufacturing a semiconductor device and a review apparatus for observing, at a high resolution, the defect in the semiconductor sample detected by the SEM visual inspection apparatus. The system has a function of transmitting an alignment dictionary image as one of alignment parameters to be set by the SEM visual inspection apparatus using an inspection recipe to the review apparatus.

Method of alignment for efficient defect review

An apparatus for processing a defect candidate image, including: a scanning electron microscope for taking an enlarged image of a specimen by irradiating and scanning a converged electron beam onto the specimen and detecting charged particles emanated from the specimen by the irradiation; an image processor for processing the image taken by the scanning electron microscope to detect defect candidates on the specimen and classify the detected defect candidates into one of plural classes; a memory for storing output from the image processor including images of the detected defect candidates; and a display unit which displays information stored in the memory and an indicator, wherein the display unit displays a distribution of the detected and classified defect candidates in a map format by distinguishing by the classified class, and the display unit also displays an image of a defect candidate stored in the memory together with the map which is indicated on the map by the indicator.

Pattern inspection method and apparatus

An apparatus for processing a defect candidate image, including: an imager for taking an enlarged image of a specimen; an image processor for processing the image taken by the imager to detect defect candidates existing on the specimen and classify the detected defect candidates into one of plural defect classes; a memory for storing information of the defect candidates including the images of the defect candidates and the classified defect class data outputted from the image processor; and a display unit having a display screen for displaying information stored in the memory, wherein the display unit displays an image of the defect candidates together with the defect class data stored in the memory and the displayed defect class data is changeable on the display screen, and the memory changes the stored defect class data of the displayed defect candidate to the changed defect class data.

An inspection method and apparatus irradiates a sample on which a pattern is formed with an electron beam, so that an inspection image and a reference image can be generated on the basis of a secondary electron or a reflected electron emitted by the sample. An abnormal pattern is determined based on a difference in halftone values of each pixel between the inspection image and the reference image. A plurality of feature quantities of the abnormal pattern are obtained from an image of the abnormal pattern, and, based on the distribution of the plurality of feature quantities of the abnormal pattern, a range for classifying the type of the abnormal pattern is designated. Thus, a desired defect can be extracted from many defects extracted by inspection.

Inspection method and apparatus using an electron beam

A pattern inspection apparatus including: an image detecting part for detecting a digital image of an object substrate; a display having a screen on which the digital image of the object substrate and/or a distribution of defect candidates in a map form are displayable; an input device for inputting information of a non-inspection region to be masked on the object substrate by defining a region on the screen on which said distribution of defect candidates is displayed in a map form; a memory part for storing coordinate data, pattern data or feature quantity data of the non-inspection region to be masked on the object substrate inputted on the screen by the input device; and a defect judging part in which the digital image detected by the image detecting part is examined in a state that a region matching with a condition stored in the memory part is masked and a defect is detected in a region other than said masked region.

In a pattern inspecting apparatus, images of places which can be expected to be the same pattern are compared with one another. However, a comparison of images obtained by different stage scans and the occurrence of a place capable of being inspected only once lead to a deterioration in the performance of detecting various error defects and an area incapable of being inspected, respectively. For solving this problem, defects detected in a high sensitivity condition are regarded as defect candidates and a critical threshold value, used as a boundary to detect a smaller value as a defect, of a defect candidate portion is obtained by an image processing circuit or an image of the defect candidate portion is obtained by processing with software. Further, the critical threshold value thus obtained is compared with plural threshold values, thereby permitting plural inspection results to be obtained in a single inspection.

Method and its apparatus for inspecting a pattern

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Hitachi, Japan

Hiroshi Miyai