US 12,154,264 B2Granted

Defect inspecting system and defect inspecting method

AssigneeHitachi High-Tech Corporation

InventorsMinoru Harada, Naoaki Kondo, Yohei Minekawa

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Abstract

A defect inspecting system includes a detector configured to image a sample and a host control device that acquires an inspection image including a defect and a plurality of reference images not including a defect site and generates a pseudo defect image by editing a predetermined reference image among the plurality of acquired reference images. An initial parameter is determined with which the pseudo defect site is detectable from the pseudo defect image. The host control device acquires a defect candidate site from the inspection image using the initial parameter, estimates a high-quality image from an image of a site corresponding to the defect candidate site using the parameter acquired in image quality enhancement, and specifies an actual defect site in the inspection image by executing defect discrimination. A parameter is determined with which a site close to the specified actual defect site is detectable using the inspection image.

Claims9

Dependent claims

A defect inspecting system comprising:

a defect inspection device including a detector configured to image a sample;
and
a host control device,
wherein the host control device
causes the defect inspection device to acquire an inspection image including a defect and causes the defect inspection device to acquire a plurality of reference images not including a defect site,
generates a pseudo defect image by editing a predetermined reference image among the plurality of acquired reference images such that the edited reference image includes a pseudo defect site,
determines an initial parameter with which the pseudo defect site is detectable from the pseudo defect image,
acquires a defect candidate site from the inspection image using the initial parameter,
estimates a high-quality image from an image of a site corresponding to the defect candidate site in each of the inspection image and the reference image,
specifies an actual defect site in the inspection image by executing defect discrimination using the estimated high-quality images in the inspection image and the reference image, and
determines a parameter with which a site close to the specified actual defect site is detectable.

8 more elements

A defect inspecting method comprising:

an image acquisition step of acquiring an inspection image including a defect and acquiring a plurality of reference images not including a defect site;
a pseudo defect image generation step of generating a pseudo defect image by editing a predetermined reference image acquired in the image acquisition step such that the edited reference image includes a pseudo defect site;
an initial parameter adjustment step of determining an initial parameter with which the pseudo defect site is detectable from the pseudo defect image;
a defect candidate inspection step of acquiring a defect candidate site from the inspection image using the initial parameter;
an image quality enhancement step of estimating a high-quality image from an image of a site corresponding to the defect candidate site in each of the inspection image and the reference image;
a defect discrimination step of specifying an actual defect site in the inspection image by executing defect discrimination using the high-quality images in the inspection image and the reference image that are estimated in the image quality enhancement step;
and
a parameter adjustment step of determining a parameter with which a site close to the specified actual defect site is detectable.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 17/781,473Filed 24 Dec 2019
Published: US 2023/0052350 A116 Feb 2023
Granted: 26 Nov 2024
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification24 codes

G06T 7/001
Industrial image inspection: using an image reference approach
G01N 23/2251
Using electron or ion: using incident electron beams, e.g. scanning electron microscopy [SEM]
G06T 5/60
Image enhancement or restoration: using machine learning, e.g. neural networks
G06T 5/73
Image enhancement or restoration: deblurring; Sharpening