Hitachi-high-technologies Corporation

Kotoko Hirose

Takeshi Kawasaki

Tomonori Nakano

Hiroyuki Ito

Haruo Yoda

Makoto Ezumi

Noboru Moriya

Disclosed is a scanning charged particle beam apparatus equipped with an aberration corrector, contrived to eliminate resolution degradation in tilt observation by a chromatic third-order aperture aberration without relying on a specific optical system. A controller of the scanning charged particle beam apparatus provides a chromatic third-order aperture aberration measurement method relevant to tilt observation of a specimen. Further, the controller has a chromatic aberration control function relevant to tilt observation of a specimen. By means of the chromatic aberration control function, the controller controls a chromatic aberration to be positive or negative, rather than remaining at 0, in order to eliminate an image blur which occurs in a direction parallel to the specimen surface due to a chromatic third-order aperture aberration and a chromatic aberration at a tilt angle (t1) under observation and another tilt angle (&#x2212;t1) axially opposite to the tilt angle.

Scanning charged particle beam device and method for correcting chromatic spherical combination aberration

Disclosed is a scanning charged particle microscope provided with an aberration measuring means that measures high-order geometrical aberration at high precision and high speed. An image obtained by a single-hole aperture and an image obtained by a multiple-hole aperture arranged in a region larger than that for the single-hole aperture are deconvoluted, an aberration quantity is determined based on the profiles of beams tilted in a plurality of directions and the obtained quantity is fed back to an aberration corrector.

Charged particle beam apparatus and geometrical aberration measurement method therefor

A focused charged particle beam apparatus including an aberration corrector, capable of finding the absolute value of the aberration coefficient at high speed, and capable of making high-accuracy adjustments at high speed. A deflection coil tilts the input beam relative to the object point, and measures the defocus data and aberration quantity at high speed while the beam is tilted from one image, and perform least squares fitting on these results to find the absolute value of the aberration coefficient prior to tilting the beam, and to adjust the aberration corrector.

Charged particle beam apparatus including aberration corrector

A tilted illumination observation method and observation device with easy adjustment, high speed, good reproducibility and low cost is provided. A high resolution tilt image of a specimen is obtained by extracting the blurring on the scanning spot occurring during beam tilt from the image (step) captured by the tilted beam, and the image (step) captured from directly above the standard specimen; and then deconvoluting (step) the tilted image of the target specimen (step) using the extracted scanning spot from the oblique beam.

Method and apparatus of tilted illumination observation

There is provided a charged particle radiation device provided with an aberration corrector capable of correcting aberration with high precision in a short time by automatically setting an aberration coefficient measuring condition to thereby realize measurement with high precision. The charged particle radiation device has a feature that a value of defocus and a value of astigma, occurring owing to aberration at the time of the beam tilting, are estimated on the basis of results of aberration measurement, thereby adjusting an electron optical system on the basis of these values.

Charged particle radiation device provided with aberration corrector

A method for estimation of a probe shape, in a scanning electron microscope provided with an aberration corrector, and the method is designed so as to obtain a probe image, by inputting to a computer an image taken in a just-focused state and an image taken in a de-focused state, as an image data; preparing a correlation window by automatically determining a size of a correlation window image, based on an input data size and an output data size; executing cross-correlation calculation between the correlation window and a reference area; and repeating this calculation while shifting the reference area, so as to obtain a cross-correlation matrix, in order to stably obtain the probe image, without receiving effects of use conditions or noises.

Method for estimation of probe shape in charged particle beam instruments

The present invention provides an aberration corrector giving excellent assembly accuracy but having fewer parts and fewer adjustment locations in number. In order to achieve it, a multistage multipole is formed by arranging plural combinations of electrodes around an optical axis using alignment blocks, each combination of electrodes being made by brazing-integrating plural electrodes with a ceramic material interposed therebetween.

Aberration corrector and charged particle beam apparatus using the same

A charged particle beam apparatus includes: a correction image acquisition partfor making a detectoracquire items of two-dimensional image data at different focal positions; a directional differentiation operation partfor obtaining directional derivative values in a plurality of directions for each of the items of two-dimensional image data at different focal positions; an aberration parameter calculation partfor obtaining aberration parameters according to previously determined methods by using the directional derivative values in a plurality of directions for each of the items of two-dimensional image data; an aberration correction value calculation partfor obtaining correction values for aberrations by using the aberration parameters; and a control partfor setting the correction values in a correction optical system control means to make an aberration correctorcorrect the aberrations.

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Abiko, Japan

Kotoko Hirose