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:
Apr. 06, 2010
Filed:
Jul. 06, 2005
Gernot Brasen, Mainz, DE;
Christian Laue, Mainz, DE;
Matthias Loeffler, Eisenberg, DE;
Heiko Theuer, Mainz, DE;
Gernot Brasen, Mainz, DE;
Christian Laue, Mainz, DE;
Matthias Loeffler, Eisenberg, DE;
Heiko Theuer, Mainz, DE;
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
The present invention provides a method, an optical inspection apparatus as well as a computer program product for optical inspection of a surface. The optical inspection apparatus can be effectively applied for optical inspection of periodic structures on e.g. a semi-conductor wafer for the purpose of quality control. By effectively splitting a light beam into a plurality of spatially separated light beams and by selective usage of these light beams, various surface segments of the surface can be inspected simultaneously by superposition of respective images. A resulting superposition image can then be compared with a reference image for detection of defects of the surface.