Hitachi-high-technologies Corporation

Canon Inc.

Yuji Inoue

Kimiaki Ando

Haruo Yoda

Hiroshi Kikuchi

Masato Muraki

Ryo Fujita

Nobuhiro Obara

Atsushi Takane

Yoshikiyo Yui

Kazuo Takahashi

Koji Kawaki

Terumi Obuchi

A surface inspection apparatus includes a blocking unit included in a subsequent processing unit that groups data items into having an arbitrary number of data items. The subsequent processing unit acquires a data item from each of the blocks. The blocking unit changes, in accordance with an instruction transmitted from a state monitoring unit, the number of data items to be blocked. A threshold processing unit acquires data items from the blocking unit that have values larger than a threshold, and transmits the data items to a memory. The state monitoring unit monitors an available capacity of the memory. When the state monitoring unit detects a reduction in the available capacity of the memory, it causes the blocking unit to increase the number of data items to be blocked into each of the blocks so that data does not overflow from the memory.

Surface inspection apparatus and surface inspection method

Provided is a method wherein a multi-anode detector is used for the purpose of detecting scattered light from a wafer, data obtained from the detector (multi-anode) for detecting defects is used, the shape of a beam radiated to the wafer, a rotational shift between the radius direction and the beam long side, and the like are calculated, and the optical axis of the irradiation beam is adjusted. Furthermore, the method is provided with a technique which feeds back the correction quantities for rotation and amplitude to inspection signal data, on the basis of the correction data, and corrects inspection data. Since fine correction with the adjustment of an optics system and signal processing is made possible, positional accuracy of defect inspection and accuracy of defect level (defect size) are improved.

Inspecting apparatus and inspecting method

To provide a defect inspection apparatus and method adapted to easily assign threshold levels to scattered-light detectors and to appropriately acquire data detected by each scattered-light detector. The apparatus includes a stage device on which to rest a sample; a laser light irradiation device that irradiates the sample on the stage device with inspection light; scattered-light detectors, each of which detects a beam of light, scattered from the sample, and outputs an image signal; a threshold level setter formed so that an associated threshold level for judging whether defects are present is set only for an image signal selected from individual image signals of the scattered-light detectors or from image signals obtained by arithmetic processing based on the image signals, and a threshold level setting circuit that acquires the individual image signals, only if the image signal exceeds the threshold level set in the threshold level setter.

Defect inspection apparatus and method utilizing multiple inspection conditions

High-contrast exposure is performed by use of a small dose of electron beams, a pattern is formed on a wafer with high accuracy, and high-precision inspection is performed. In pattern formation, proximity effect correction processing is performed. Moreover, exposure of electron beams is performed based on a result of filtering using an inverse characteristic of exposure characteristics of the electron beams. Furthermore, in pattern inspection, electron beams are irradiated based on a result of filtering for obtaining a peripheral region of an edge of the pattern formed.

Electron beam apparatus and method of generating an electron beam irradiation pattern

In the present invention, vector data developing unit, ends separating unit, overlap removing unit and bitmapped data generating unit are sequentially connected in order to make pipeline processing. In addition, data of each raster is orderly arranged as a unit so that each processor can process data of each raster at a time. Each processor can make the pipeline processing to fast generate data. In addition, small-scale circuits can be used to realize the system because each raster can be processed as a unit of processing. Moreover, since data is orderly arranged before being processed, multi-valued bitmapped data can be generated in the order of drawing. Therefore, the drawing operation and data generating operation can be performed in parallel without use of any large-scale storage device.

Growing community of inventors

Hitachinaka, Japan

Yuji Inoue