The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.

The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.

Date of Patent:
Oct. 24, 2023

Filed:

Mar. 19, 2020
Applicant:

Asml Netherlands B.v., Veldhoven, NL;

Inventors:

Martinus Gerardus Maria Johannes Maassen, San Francisco, CA (US);

Peter Paul Hempenius, Nuenen, NL;

Weiming Ren, San Jose, CA (US);

Zhongwei Chen, San Jose, CA (US);

Assignee:

ASML Netherlands B.V., Veldhoven, NL;

Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
H01J 37/21 (2006.01); H01J 37/244 (2006.01); H01J 37/28 (2006.01);
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
H01J 37/21 (2013.01); H01J 37/244 (2013.01); H01J 37/28 (2013.01); H01J 2237/0453 (2013.01); H01J 2237/2817 (2013.01);
Abstract

A charged particle beam apparatus includes a beamlet forming unit configured to form and scan an array of beamlets on a sample. A first portion of the array of beamlets is focused onto a focus plane, and a second portion of the array of beamlets has at least one beamlet with a defocusing level with respect to the focus plane. The charged particle beam apparatus also includes a detector configured to detect an image of the sample formed by the array of beamlets, and a processor configured to estimate a level of separation between the focus plane and the sample based on the detected image and then reduce the level of separation based on the estimated level.


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