Patent ID: 11961703
Assignee: NUFLARE TECHNOLOGY, INC.
Field: Electrical machinery, apparatus, energy (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 4:
5. A multiple electron-beam image acquisition method radiating multiple primary electron beams onto a substrate and acquiring an image of multiple secondary electron beams emitted from the substrate, the method comprising:
arranging the multiple primary electron beams on the substrate in a square lattice along a first moving direction of a stage allowing the substrate to be placed thereon and a second moving direction perpendicular to the first moving direction in a state where, when the multiple primary electron beams are viewed as a whole, beams around four corners of the square lattice are omitted, wherein
an arrangement state of the multiple primary electron beams is a state where, when the first moving direction is defined as a column-arranged direction and the second moving direction is defined as a row-arranged direction, a sum of number of beams in a K-th row and number of beams in a (N−A+K)-th row is M, where
M is a maximum number of columns of beams forming the multiple primary electron beams,
N is number of rows of the beams forming the multiple primary electron beams,
A is ½ of number of rows in which number of beams in the column-arranged direction is smaller than M, and
K is any integer that is equal to or larger than one and is equal to or smaller than A, wherein
the multiple electron-beam image acquisition method further comprising scanning an inspection region of the substrate along a plurality of stripes with the multiple primary electron beams, the stripes being obtained by virtually dividing the inspection region, the stripes extending along the first moving direction, the stripes having no gaps, being non-overlapping, and being adjacent to each other in the second moving direction,
each of the stripes having a symmetrical shape in the second moving direction, the symmetrical shape in the second moving direction having a varying period and a varying shape in the second moving direction, the symmetrical shapes of adjacent stripes being shifted from each other in a phase, and the inspection region has a shape with no gap,
each of the stripes includes a plurality of scanning regions aligned in the first moving direction, each scanning region included in the same stripe being adjacent to an edge of an adjacent scanning region in the same stripe, and
the stage is moved in a continuous moving method.