Method and apparatus for inspecting a semiconductor device

A method of inspecting a wafer, comprising the steps of:

• irradiating a focused charged particle beam onto a desired area of said wafer with a plurality of chips of the same pattern on it;
• obtaining a charged particle beam image of said desired area;
• inspecting said desired area from said charged particle beam image;
• performing estimation of failure occurrence conditions of said chip from the inspection data of said desired area for said plurality of chips on said wafer;
• determining a distribution of said estimated failure occurrence conditions on said chip;
• and,
• outputting information about said determined distribution of said estimated failure occurrence conditions over said wafer.

An apparatus for inspecting a wafer, comprising:

• a charged particle beam scanning irradiation means for performing scanning irradiation of a focused charged particle beam onto a surface of a wafer with patterns formed on it;
• a secondary charged particle beam detection means for detecting secondary charged particles emitted from said surface of said wafer by scanning irradiation of a focused charged particle beam onto said surface of said wafer;
• an image obtaining means for obtaining a charged particle beam image of said wafer from detected signals of secondary charged particles that have been detected;
• an information obtaining means for obtaining information about image feature amount on said surface of said wafer from the charged particle beam image of said wafer;
• a storage means for storing a threshold level;
• an estimation means for estimating the quality of a pattern that has been formed on the periphery of said desired area by comparing information about image feature amount that has been obtained;
• and
• an outputting means for outputting information about the quality of said pattern that has been estimated.