Semiconductor charged particle detector for microscopy

Abstract

A detector may be provided with an array of sensing elements. The detector may include a semiconductor substrate including the array, and a circuit configured to count a number of charged particles incident on the detector. The circuit of the detector may be configured to process outputs from the plurality of sensing elements and increment a counter in response to a charged particle arrival event on a sensing element of the array. Various counting modes may be used. Counting may be based on energy ranges. Numbers of charged particles may be counted at a certain energy range and an overflow flag may be set when overflow is encountered in a sensing element. The circuit may be configured to determine a time stamp of respective charged particle arrival events occurring at each sensing element. Size of the sensing element may be determined based on criteria for enabling charged particle counting.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.