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US 8,618,517 B1Granted
Pattern measuring apparatus
AssigneeHitachi High-Technologies Corporation
InventorsHiroshi Nishihama, Tatsuya Maeda, Mitsuji Ikeda, Susumu Koyama
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AssigneeHitachi High-Technologies Corporation
InventorsHiroshi Nishihama, Tatsuya Maeda, Mitsuji Ikeda, Susumu Koyama
Estimating the term…
An object of the present invention is to provide a pattern measuring apparatus which performs high-accuracy concavity/convexity determination (e.g., distinguishing between a line segment and space) while simultaneously reducing the dose of a beam falling onto a pattern to be measured. To attain the object, this invention proposes a pattern measuring apparatus which specifies a pattern in a measurement object area by scanning a tilted bean with respect to another area different from the measurement object area and then performs measurement based on the pattern-specifying result. With such arrangement, it becomes possible to perform measurement without the risk of wrong pattern designation while lowering the dose of a beam hitting the measurement object area.
A pattern measuring apparatus, comprising:
A pattern measuring apparatus having an arithmetical unit for determining a pattern size by using a signal to be obtained based on scanning of a charged particle beam emitted from a charged particle source, wherein the apparatus comprises a beam tilting deflector for irradiating the charged particle beam while tilting this beam with respect to an ideal light axis thereof and wherein the arithmetical unit specifies a kind of a pattern formed on a sample based on a signal to be obtained by obliquely scanning the beam in an area of the sample being different from an area used to obtain the pattern size, thereby to measure the pattern thus specified.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.