Nuflare Technology, Inc.

Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Nec Corporation

Kabushiki Kaisha Topcon

Advanced Mask Inspection Technology Inc.

Nuflare Technology America, Inc.

Riki Ogawa

Masataka Shiratsuchi

Hideo Tsuchiya

Ryoichi Hirano

Shinji Sugihara

Hiromu Inoue

Masatoshi Hirono

Hideaki Hashimoto

Toshiyuki Watanabe

Hiroyuki Nagahama

Toshiaki Otaki

Chosaku Noda

Toru Tojo

Ikunao Isomura

Akihiko Sekine

Munehiro Ogasawara

Nobutaka Kikuiri

Takeshi Fujiwara

Yasushi Sanada

Yasuhiro Yamashita

Atsushi Ando

Yoshinori Honguh

Kazuhiko Inoue

Koji Nakajima

Noboru Kobayashi

Mitsuo Tabata

Kazuhiro Nakashima

Masayuki Hideshima

Kazuto Matsuki

Soichiro Mitsui

John Hartley

Yoshihide Kato

Takuro Nagao

Tomohiro Nakamura

Provided is an inspection apparatus including: an irradiation source irradiating an electron beam to a pattern of an inspection target object, the inspection target object having a first surface and a second surface having the pattern; a first voltage application circuit applying a first voltage to the first surface; a second voltage application circuit applying a second voltage to the second surface; and a detector for acquiring an inspection image generated from the pattern by irradiating the electron beam, wherein |V−V|=|V|<|V| is satisfied, when an acceleration voltage of an electron included in the electron beam is V, an incident voltage of the electron reaching the second surface is denoted by V, the first voltage is denoted by V, and the second voltage is denoted by V.

Inspection apparatus

Provided is an inspection apparatus including: an irradiation source irradiating a first pattern formed on an inspection target object with an electron beam; a detection circuit acquiring a first inspection image generated from the first pattern by irradiation; a filter circuit performing smoothing using a local region having a first size in a direction parallel to a first outline included in the first inspection image and a second size smaller than the first size in a direction perpendicular to the first outline and acquiring a second inspection image including a second outline generated by the smoothing; and a comparison circuit comparing the second inspection image with a predetermined reference image.

Inspection apparatus and inspection method

A pattern inspection apparatus according to an aspect described herein includes: a stage on which an object to be inspected is capable to be mounted, a multibeam column that irradiates the object to be inspected with multi-primary electron beams, and a multi-detector including a first detection pixel that receives irradiation of a first secondary electron beam emitted after a first beam scanning region of the object to be inspected is irradiated with a first primary electron beam of the multi-primary electron beams and a second detection pixel that receives irradiation of a second secondary electron beam emitted after a second beam scanning region adjacent to the first beam scanning region of the object to be inspected and overlapping with the first beam scanning region is irradiated with a second primary electron beam adjacent to the first primary electron beam of the multi-primary electron beams; a comparison unit that obtains a difference in beam intensity between the first primary electron beam and the second primary electron beam by comparing overlapping portions of a first frame image acquired through entering of the first secondary electron beam into the first detection pixel and a second frame image acquired through entering of the second secondary electron beam into the second detection pixel; and a sensitivity adjustor that adjusts detection sensitivity of the first detection pixel and/or the second detection pixel so as to correct the difference in beam intensity.

Multibeam inspection apparatus

A multiple electron beam inspection apparatus includes a correction circuit that corrects a partial secondary electron image of partial secondary electron images configuring a secondary electron image and obtained by irradiation with a corresponding primary electron beam of the multiple primary electron beams such that the partial secondary electron image becomes close to a uniform beam partial image when an irradiation region of a primary electron beam corresponding to the partial secondary electron image is irradiated with a uniform beam obtained by equalizing shapes and sizes of all primary electron beams, by using a function for individual correction of each primary electron beam, for each of the plural partial secondary electron images, and an inspection circuit that performs inspection using plural partial secondary electron images each corrected.

Multiple electron beam inspection apparatus and multiple electron beam inspection method

There is provided an inspection method including acquiring an inspection image by irradiating a sample with a plurality of electron beams and by simultaneously scanning the sample by the electron beams, performing first correction of a reference image corresponding to the inspection image or second correction of the inspection image based on a plurality of distortions of each of the electron beams and on a position scanned by each of the electron beams in the inspection image, and performing first comparison of the reference image subjected to the first correction with the inspection image or second comparison of the reference image with the inspection image subjected to the second correction.

Inspection method and inspection apparatus

A multiple electron beam irradiation apparatus includes a first region setting circuit which sets a first frame region of a plurality of first frame regions which can be irradiated with remaining beams after excluding beams in one row and one column at end; a second region setting circuit which sets a second frame region of a plurality of second frame regions each having four corners equivalent to an irradiation position of the defective beam by using normal beams; and an electron beam irradiation mechanism which performs the first multiple electron beam irradiation processing for the each of the plurality of first frame regions of the target object by using the normal beams, and perform second multiple electron beam irradiation processing for each of the plurality of second frame regions by using at least beams at the four corners.

Multiple electron beam irradiation apparatus, multiple electron beam inspection apparatus, and multiple electron beam irradiation method

According to one aspect of the present invention, a multiple electron beam inspection apparatus includes a reference image generation circuit generating reference images corresponding to the secondary electron images, in accordance with an image generation characteristic of a secondary electron image by irradiation of one beam; and a correction circuit generating corrected reference images in which, on the basis of deviation information between a figure pattern of the secondary electron image by irradiation of the one beam of the multiple primary electron beams and a figure pattern of a secondary electron image by irradiation of another beam different from the one beam of the multiple primary electron beams, a shape of a figure pattern of a reference image corresponding to the figure pattern of the secondary electron image by the irradiation of the another beam in the reference images is corrected.

Provided is a pattern inspection method including: irradiating a substrate with an electron beam, a pattern being formed on the substrate; acquiring an inspection image as a secondary electron image of the pattern; setting a pixel value equal to or less than a first threshold value minus a half of a predetermined detection width of the inspection image and a pixel value equal to or more than the first threshold value plus a half of the predetermined detection width of the inspection image to unprocessed; acquiring a difference image between the inspection image having the pixel value having less than the first threshold value minus the half of the predetermined detection width and the pixel value having more of the first threshold value plus the half of the predetermined detection width being set to unprocessed and a reference image of the inspection image; and performing inspection on the basis of the difference image.

Pattern inspection method and pattern inspection apparatus

According to one aspect of the present invention, a pattern inspection apparatus includes: a first sub-pixel interpolation processing circuitry configured to calculate a pixel value of a reference image corresponding to a position of each pixel of the inspection target image by performing an interpolation process using at least one pixel value of the reference image for each shift amount while variably and relatively shifting the inspection target image and the reference image by the unit of a sub-pixel using the reference image corresponding to the inspection target image; and an SSD calculation processing circuitry configured to calculate a sum of squared difference between each pixel value of the inspection target image and a corresponding pixel value of the reference image subjected to a filter process for the each shift amount.

Pattern inspection apparatus and pattern inspection method

An electron beam inspection apparatus includes an acquisition processing circuitry to acquire surface material information presenting a surface material of the substrate and a value of an acceleration voltage of an electron beam; a sequence determination processing circuitry to determine a scan sequence of a plurality of stripe regions on the basis of the surface material of the substrate and the value of the acceleration voltage, the plurality of stripe regions obtained by virtually dividing an inspection region of the substrate in a stripe shape; a secondary electron image acquisition mechanism including a detector for detecting a secondary electron and configured to scan the plurality of stripe regions of the substrate according to a determined scan sequence and to acquire a secondary electron image of the substrate; and a comparison processing circuitry to compare the secondary electron image with a corresponding reference image.

Electron beam inspection apparatus and electron beam inspection method

A multi-charged particle beam inspection apparatus includes a movable stage to place thereon an inspection substrate where plural dies each with the same pattern are arranged in a predetermined direction, a pitch acquisition circuit to acquire an arrangement pitch of plural dies, a magnification control circuit to control, when imaging the inspection substrate with multi-charged particle beams while continuously moving the stage, magnification of the multi-charged particle beams to be a controlled magnification such that the arrangement pitch of the plural dies becomes a natural number (2 or greater) multiple of an imaging region cycle in the predetermined direction of plural imaging regions to be individually imaged by each beam at each arrangement position of the multi-charged particle beams, and an acquisition mechanism to acquire inspection images of the plural dies on the inspection substrate, using the multi-charged particle beams whose magnification has been controlled to be the controlled magnification.

Multiple charged particle beam inspection apparatus and multiple charged particle beam inspection method

A multiple electron beam irradiation apparatus includes an electromagnetic lens configured to refract multiple electron beams incident, an aberration corrector arranged in the magnetic field of the electromagnetic lens and configured to be able to individually apply a bias potential and a deflection potential to each of the multiple electron beams, and an objective lens configured to focus the multiple electron beams, a trajectory of the each of which has been individually corrected by the bias potential and the deflection potential, onto a target object.

Multiple electron beam irradiation apparatus, multiple electron beam inspection apparatus and multiple electron beam irradiation method

A charged particle beam inspection method conducted by disposing a sample on a stage and by performing a first scanning in a first beam scanning area on the sample by using one first charged particle beam out of a plurality of charged particle beams while the stage is moved so that a first inspection of a first inspection unit in the first beam scanning area is performed, and by performing a second scanning in a second beam scanning area on the sample by using one second charged particle beam out of the charged particle beams while the stage is moved so that a second inspection of a second inspection unit in the second beam scanning area is performed.

Charged particle beam inspection method

A pattern inspection apparatus includes a transmitted illumination optical system to illuminate change the shape of a first inspection light, a reflected illumination optical system to illuminate a mask substrate with a second inspection light by using an objective lens and a polarizing element, and let a reflected light from the mask substrate pass therethrough, a drive mechanism to enable the polarizing element to be moved from/to outside/inside an optical path, a sensor to receive a transmitted light from the mask substrate illuminated with the first inspection light during stage moving, and an aperture stop, between the mask substrate and the sensor, to adjust a light flux diameter of the transmitted light so that the transmitted light reaching the sensor can be switched between high and low numerical aperture (NA) states with which the transmitted light from the mask substrate can enter the objective lens.

An electron beam inspection apparatus according to an embodiment includes a stage holding a substrate with a pattern; an electron beam column irradiating the substrate with multiple beams including a plurality of electron beams such that adjacent regions irradiated with the electron beams have an overlap portion therebetween; a first image storage unit storing a first inspection image acquired by irradiating a first inspection region of the substrate with the multiple beams; a second image storage unit storing a second inspection image acquired by irradiating a second inspection region of the substrate with the multiple beams; a correction coefficient storage unit storing a correction coefficient for correcting an image of the overlap portion; an image correction unit correcting an image of the overlap portion using the correction coefficient; and a comparison unit comparing the first inspection image with the second inspection image.

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Kawasaki, Japan

Riki Ogawa