Back to results
US 8,304,750 B2Granted
Scanning charged particle beams
AssigneeCarl Zeiss NTS GmbH
InventorsDirk Preikszas, Michael Steigerwald, Joerg Ackermann
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Methods are disclosed that include exposing, in direct succession, portions of a surface of a sample to a charged particle beam, the portions of the surface of the sample forming a row in a first direction, the charged particle beam having an average spot size f at the surface of the sample, each portion being spaced from its neighboring portions by a distance of at least d in the first direction, and a ratio d/f being 2 or more.
Claims30
A method, comprising:
- determining a side length F·√{square root over (A)} of a smallest square that encloses a region of a sample, wherein A is an area of the region and F is a constant;
- and
- exposing each of M portions of the region of the sample to a charged particle beam, wherein each of the M portions is exposed continuously to the charged particle beam for a time period t1, a shortest time period between successive exposures of any one of the M portions to the charged particle beam is t2, and the time periods t1 and t2 are selected so that a ratio
- t
- 1
- t
- 1
- +
- t
- 2
- is less than
- 1
- 2
-
- F
-
- M
- .
15 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.