Method for voltage contrast imaging with a corpuscular multi-beam microscope, corpuscular multi-beam microscope for voltage contrast imaging and semiconductor structures for voltage contrast imaging with a corpuscular multi-beam microscope

A corpuscular multi-beam microscope, comprising:

• a charged particle source configured to produce a corpuscular beam;
• an aperture plate comprising a first portion comprising a plurality of first apertures and a second portion comprising a plurality of second apertures,
• wherein:
• the corpuscular multi-beam microscope is configured so that, during use of the corpuscular multi-beam microscope a corpuscular beam generated by the charged particle source impinges on the aperture plate so that:
• i) some of the corpuscular beam is blocked by the adapted aperture plate;
• ii) a first portion of the corpuscular beam passes through the first apertures to produce a first plurality of individual corpuscular beams;
• and
• iii) a second portion of the corpuscular beam passes through the second apertures to produce a second plurality of individual beams;
• and
• the first plurality of individual corpuscular beams differs from the second plurality of individual corpuscular beams with respect to at least one member selected from the group consisting of beam current, beam spacing, beam focus and beam shape.

A corpuscular multi-beam microscope, comprising:

• a charged particle source configured to produce a corpuscular beam;
• an aperture plate comprising a first portion having a plurality of first apertures and a second portion comprising a plurality of second apertures,
• wherein:
• the corpuscular multi-beam microscope is configured so that, during use of the corpuscular multi-beam microscope a corpuscular beam generated by the charged particle source impinges on the aperture plate so that:
• i) some of the corpuscular beam is blocked by the adapted aperture plate;
• ii) a first portion of the corpuscular beam passes through the first portion of the aperture plate to produce a first plurality of individual corpuscular beams;
• and
• iii) a second portion of the corpuscular beam passes through the second portion of the aperture plate to produce a second plurality of individual beams;
• and
• at least one of the following holds:
• i) the first apertures have a different size than the second apertures;
• and
• ii) the first apertures have a different shape than the second apertures.