Patent ID: 9255891
Filing Date: 2016-02-09
CPC Classification: G01N

Claim Text:
1. A method comprising: generating a beam of illumination light having a beam intensity distribution; reshaping the beam intensity distribution of the beam of illumination light to generate a reshaped beam of illumination light, the reshaped beam of illumination light having a beam intensity distribution with a variance of less than 25% from an average intensity value across a width of an inspection track illuminated by a portion of the reshaped beam of illumination light; illuminating a surface of a specimen with the reshaped beam of illumination light over an inspection area of the inspection track, wherein a beam width of the illumination light over the inspection area varies in a direction parallel to a trajectory of the inspection track as a single valued function of location across the inspection track; receiving an amount of light collected from the inspection area; generating an output signal based on the received amount of collected light; determining a duration of time the output signal exceeds a threshold value; and determining a location of a defect within the inspection track in a direction across the inspection track based on the duration of time.