Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi-High-Technologies Corporation

Takashi Iizumi

Juntaro Arima

Tadashi Otaka

Satoru Yamaguchi

Atsushi Takane

Masaaki Inaba

Mitsugu Sato

Osamu Komuro

Hideo Todokoro

Tatsuya Maeda

Takeiki Aizono

Hidetoshi Morokuma

Yasuhiko Ozawa

Kazutaka Nimura

Tohru Ishitani

Hiroki Kawada

Tsuneo Terasawa

Atsuko Yamaguchi

Masahiro Watanabe

Yuji Takagi

Maki Tanaka

Chie Shishido

Yasuhiro Yoshitake

Shunichi Matsumoto

Akira Maeda

Tetsuo Yokoyama

Shigeto Isakozawa

Hiromi Inada

Fuminobu Komura

Koichi Homma

Toshihiro Furuya

Koichi Haruna

Yutaka Takuma

Hiromi Kashiwabara

An object of the present invention is to provide a scanning electron microscope for reducing a process concerning inspection positioning or an input operation, thereby functioning with high precision at high speed. To accomplish the above object, the present invention provides a scanning electron microscope having a function for identifying a desired position on the basis of a pattern registered beforehand, which includes a means for setting information concerning the pattern kind, the interval between a plurality of parts constituting the pattern, and the size of parts constituting the pattern and a means for forming a pattern image composed of a plurality of parts on the basis of the information obtained by the concerned means.

Scanning electron microscope

An object of the present invention is to suppress measurement errors caused by the fact that the shrink amount due to scan of an electron beam differs pattern by pattern. To accomplish this object, according to the invention, functions indicative of a process of change of pattern dimension when the electron beam is irradiated on a sample are prepared in respect of the kinds of sample patterns, and dimension values of a particular pattern measured by scanning the electron beam on the particular pattern are fitted to a function prepared for the particular pattern to calculate a dimension of the particular pattern before it changes.

Sample dimension measuring method and scanning electron microscope

An on-line diagnostic system and method enable equipment information stored in each piece of industrial equipment to be safely disclosed to maintenance personnel to the extent permitted by the user of the industrial equipment. The on-line diagnostics systems comprises industrial equipment and a maintenance apparatus for the maintenance of the industrial equipment, which are connected via the Internet. Equipment information indicating the state of the industrial equipment is encrypted using a specific common key, and the encrypted equipment information is transmitted to the maintenance apparatus in response to a request therefrom. The fact that the common key has been transmitted from the industrial equipment to the maintenance apparatus is outputted. After receiving the encrypted equipment information and the common key that have been transmitted, the encrypted equipment formation is decrypted using the common key, and the decrypted equipment information is outputted.

System and method for on-line diagnostics

Image evaluation method capable of objectively evaluating the image resolution of a microscope image. An image resolution method is characterized in that resolution in partial regions of an image is obtained over an entire area of the image or a portion of the image, averaging is performed over the entire area of the image or the portion of the image, and the averaged value is established as the resolution evaluation value of the entire area of the image or the portion of the image. This method eliminates the subjective impressions of the evaluator from evaluation of microscope image resolution, so image resolution evaluation values of high accuracy and good repeatability can be obtained.

Image evaluation method and microscope

An object of the present invention is to provide a sample image forming method and a charged particle beam apparatus which are suitable for realizing suppressing of the view area displacement with high accuracy while the influence of charging due to irradiation of the charged particle beam is being suppressed. In order to attain the above object, the present invention provide a method of forming a sample image by scanning a charged particle beam on a sample and forming an image based on secondary signals emitted from the sample, the method comprising the steps of forming a plurality of composite images by superposing a plurality of images obtained by a plurality of scanning times; and forming a further composite image by correcting positional displacements among the plurality of composite images and superposing the plurality of composite images, and a charged particle beam apparatus for realizing the above method.

Method of forming a sample image and charged particle beam apparatus

The present invention provides a remote maintenance method, a remote maintenance system, and an industrial device for enabling control and thorough services and billing according to the contents of the remote maintenance operation and the request destination of maintenance and enabling access limit according to the attribute of a service person, access limit according to the device state, and output limit according to the output mode. The industrial deviceinstalled at the factoryand the operation deviceinstalled in the maintenance centerare connected via the network. The operation devicetransmits command information indicating a command concerning maintenance to the industrial deviceand the industrial deviceexecutes a process according to the received command information, generates charge information indicating a charge concerning maintenance according to the contents of the executed process, and outputs the whole or a part of the generated charge information to the output device of the industrial device

Industrial device receiving remote maintenance operation and outputting charge information

The present invention is relates to a method for measuring average line width of line and space patterns in a simplified manner and at high speed without measuring at many positions. An average line width, an average space width, and an average pitch width are calculated from peak intervals of auto-correlation values of a differentiated image of the line and space patterns or peak patterns corresponding to line edges on projection data of the differentiated image.

Method for measuring line and space pattern using scanning electron microscope

A charged particle beam apparatus capable of automatically measuring an image magnification error of an apparatus and capable of automatically calibrating the image magnification in high precision is provided. To this end, while an image processing operation of either an auto-correlation function or an FFT transformation is employed with respect to a scanning image of a reference material having a periodic structure, the averaged pitch dimension of which is known, averaged periodic information owned by the scanning image is detected so as to measure an image magnification error of the apparatus. Also, the information as to the acquired image magnification error is fed back to an image magnification control means of the apparatus so as to automatically execute a calibration as to the image magnification in high precision.

Charged particle system and a method for measuring image magnification

An on-line diagnostics system and method enable equipment information stored in each piece of industrial equipment to be safely disclosed to maintenance personnel to the extent permitted by the user of the industrial equipment. The on-line diagnostics system comprises industrial equipment and a maintenance apparatus for the maintenance of the industrial equipment, which are connected via the Internet. Equipment information indicating the state of the industrial equipment is encrypted using a specific common key, and the encrypted equipment information is transmitted to the maintenance apparatus in response to a request therefrom. The fact that the common key has been transmitted from the industrial equipment to the maintenance apparatus is outputted. After receiving the encrypted equipment information and the common key that have been transmitted, the encrypted equipment information is decrypted using the common key, and the decrypted equipment information is outputted.

A system for measuring a pattern on a sample, including: a data processing system that processes a set of two-dimensional distribution data of intensities from the sample, to calculate: a set of edge points indicative of position of edges of the pattern in a two-dimensional plane from the two-dimensional distribution data; an approximation edge indicative of the edge of the pattern; an edge fluctuation data by calculating a difference between the set of edge points and the approximation edge; and a correlation between a first portion of the edge fluctuation data and a second portion of the edge fluctuation data.

Method and apparatus for circuit pattern inspection

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Hitachinaka, Japan

Takashi Iizumi