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.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 27, 2001
Filed:
Jul. 26, 1998
Eugen Weimer, Essingen, DE;
Abstract
The invention relates to a particle beam apparatus, in which very low target energies of the particles focused on the object can be set, with good imaging conditions. For this purpose, the beam guiding tube (,), from the anode (,) to behind the objective (,) is at a high potential, which insures that the particles within the beam guiding tube have a high kinetic energy which is independent of the target energy. A braking electrode (,) arranged after the beam guiding tube, together with the object holder (,) and the object arranged thereon, is at a specimen potential U,which deviates from the ground potential and which has the same sign as the cathode potential U,. The specimen potential U,acts as the decelerating potential, by means of which the particles are braked to energies which can be below the energy value determined by the cathode potential U,. Thus even at the lowest target energies the object does not need to be brought to a high, high-voltage potential, so that object damage and high voltage flashovers are excluded. At the same time, the kinetic energy of the electrons within the beam guiding tube is largely independent of the target energy, so that the imaging relationships within the beam guiding tube are largely independent of the target energy.