Method and apparatus for detecting a circuit pattern

An apparatus for detecting a circuit pattern comprising:

• a stage for mounting an object under inspection having a circuit pattern to be detected;
• means of generating a signal in response to the amount of movement of said stage;
• a detection optical system for detecting the circuit pattern;
• an opto-electric transducer which receives the image of the pattern provided by said detection optical system and transforms the image into an image signal;
• means of calculating the amount of expansion or contraction of the object by detecting the distance between specific patterns on the object;
• and drive control means which produces a clock signal for said opto-electric transducer based on the stage movement signal provided by said signal generation means and varies the clock signal so as to vary the dimension of the detected image arbitrarily.

An apparatus for detecting a circuit pattern comprising:

• a stage for mounting an object under inspection having a circuit pattern to be detected;
• means of generating a signal in response to the amount of movement of said stage;
• a detection optical system for detecting the circuit pattern;
• an opto-electric transducer which receives the image of the pattern provided by said detection optical system and transforms the image into an image signal;
• and drive control means which counts the number of pulses of the stage movement signal provided by said signal generation means, generates a clock signal for said opto-electric transducer when the count has reached a predetermined value, and varies the clock signal so as to vary the dimension of the detected image arbitrarily.

A method of detecting a circuit pattern, comprising the steps of:

• generating a signal in response to an amount of movement of a stage which mounts an object under inspection having a circuit pattern to be detected;
• generating a variable clock signal for an opto-electric transducer, the clock signal being a variable at least in accordance with the generated amount of movement signal;
• and
• receiving by the opto-electric transducer an image of the circuit pattern provided by a detection optical system and producing an image signal thereof in accordance with the variable clock signal.

A method of detecting a circuit pattern, comprising the steps of:

• moving an object under inspection and a sensor relative to one another in steps so that detection areas overlap;
• detecting a circuit pattern on the object under inspection with the sensor by varying the amount of step movement;
• aligning the detected circuit pattern and a reference circuit pattern;
• and
• inspecting the circuit pattern based upon a comparison of the aligned detected circuit pattern and the reference circuit pattern.

A method of generating a reference pattern, comprising the steps of:

• utilizing design information of a pattern having a predetermined pixel size in relation to a pixel size of a pattern to be inspected;
• generating a pattern in accordance with the design information;
• latching the generated pattern;
• and
• reading out the latched generated pattern at a predetermined frequency so as to obtain a reference pattern having a pixel size corresponding to the pixel size of the pattern to be inspected.

An apparatus for generating a reference pattern, comprising:

• means for generating a pattern in accordance with design information of a pattern having a predetermined pixel size in relation to a pixel size of a pattern to be inspected;
• means for latching the generated pattern;
• and
• means for reading out the latched generated pattern at a predetermined frequency so as to obtain a reference pattern having a pixel size corresponding to the pixel size of the pattern to be inspected.

An apparatus for generating a reference pattern comprising:

• means for generating a pattern based on design information having a pixel size n times an output image dimension of a desired reference pattern;
• means for latching the generated pattern;
• and
• means for reading out the latched pattern m times to obtain the reference pattern;
• where n and m are positive integers.

An apparatus for generating a two-dimensional reference pattern comprising:

• means for generating a pattern based on design information;
• means for storing the generated pattern in a line memory;
• and
• means for reading out the stored generated pattern k times from the line memory so as to obtain the reference pattern, where k is a positive integer.