US 8,949,043 B2 · Surface inspecting apparatus and method for calibrating same

Abstract

While an illumination optical system is irradiating the surface of a contaminated standard wafer with illumination light, this illumination light is scanned over the surface of the contaminated standard wafer, then detectors of a detection optical system each detect the light scattered from the surface of the contaminated standard wafer, next a predefined reference value in addition to detection results on the scattered light is used to calculate a compensation parameter “Comp” for detection sensitivity correction of photomultiplier tubes of the detectors, and the compensation parameter “Comp” is separated into a time-varying deterioration parameter “P”, an optical characteristics parameter “Opt”, and a sensor characteristics parameter “Lr”, and correspondingly managed. This makes is easy to calibrate the detection sensitivity.

Claims11

Dependent claims

A surface inspecting apparatus comprising:

a light unit that irradiates with illumination light a surface of a body to be inspected;
a scanner that scans the light irradiated from the light unit over the surface of the to-be-inspected body;
at least one light detector that detects the light scattered from the surface of the body to be inspected;
a processor configured to:
use a predefined reference value, as well as a detection result on measuring light incident upon the light detector from a measuring-light generator that generates the measuring light that serves as a reference for measuring detection sensitivity of the light detector, to compute a sensitivity correction value for correcting the detection sensitivity of the light detector;
separate the sensitivity correction value into element parameters corresponding to a plurality of factors influential upon detection sensitivity of the surface inspecting apparatus;
and
memory, associated with the processor, for storing the element parameters obtained from the separation by the processor.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Surface inspecting apparatus and method for calibrating same

Life of this patent

Surface inspecting apparatus and method for calibrating same

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims11