Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Nuflare Technology, Inc.

Hiroshi Tsukada

Takeshi Fujiwara

Hiromu Inoue

Hiroyuki Ikeda

Shuichi Tamamushi

Takanao Touya

Eiji Sawa

Hidenori Sato

Hiroyuki Tanizaki

Kentaro Okuda

Takashi Hirano

A method and system for imaging an object to be inspected and obtaining an optical image; creating a reference image from design pattern data; preparing an inspection recipe including one or more templates and parameter settings necessary for the inspection; checking the pattern and the template against each other, and selecting the reference image which corresponds to the template; detecting first and second edges in the selected reference image in accordance with the parameter setting using determined coordinates as a reference; detecting first and second edges in the optical image, this optical image corresponds to the selected reference image; and determining an inspection value by acquiring the difference between the line width of the optical image and the reference image using the first edge and second edge of the reference image and the first edge and second edges of the optical image.

Inspection system and method for inspecting line width and/or positional errors of a pattern

According to one embodiment, a pattern inspection apparatus includes a first inspection data creation section, a first delay section, a first recognition section, a first extraction section, a first and a second level difference calculation section, a first and a second determination section, and a first logic OR calculation section. The first extraction section extracts data of a sub-resolution pattern from the first inspection data and the first delay data. The first and second level difference calculation section calculate differences between an average output level of a surrounding region for a target pixel of the extracted data from the first inspection data or the first delay data and an output level of the extracted data. The first and second determination sections determine presence or absence of a defect. The first logic OR calculation section calculates logic OR of determination results of the first and second determination sections.

Pattern inspection apparatus

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

Hiroshi Tsukada