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:
Oct. 03, 2017
Filed:
Dec. 08, 2014
Hitachi High-technologies Corporation, Minato-ku, Tokyo, JP;
Masami Makuuchi, Tokyo, JP;
Takahiro Jingu, Tokyo, JP;
Hitachi High-Technologies Corporation, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
A detection circuit for accurately detecting a very small foreign material and an inspection/measurement device using the same are provided. The inspection/measurement device includes: an irradiation section that irradiates a laser beam to a surface of a specimen; and a detection section that detects scattered light from the surface of the specimen and generates a detection signal. The detection section includes: a photon counting sensor that outputs M output signals from photo-detecting elements of N pixels (M and N are natural numbers, and M<N); M current-voltage conversion sections that execute current-voltage conversion on the output signals of the photon counting sensor respectively; a voltage application section that applies reference voltages to the current-voltage conversion sections; and a detection signal generation section that generates a detection signal on the basis of the outputs of the current-voltage conversion sections.