Patent ID: 9653254
Date: 2017-05-16
CPC Classifications: B82Y,H01J

Claim:
1. A charged-particle multi-beamlet system comprising: a source of charged particles; a multi-aperture plate disposed in a charged particle beam path of the system downstream of the source, wherein the multi-aperture plate comprises plural apertures forming a first multi-aperture array with apertures arranged at positions of a basic pattern; a multi-aperture selector plate having a main face and plural apertures forming plural multi-aperture arrays comprising at least a second and a third multi-aperture array, wherein apertures of the second and the third multi-aperture array are arranged at positions of the basic pattern; a carrier, wherein the multi-aperture selector plate is mounted on the carrier; an actuator configured to move the carrier such that the multi-aperture selector plate is disposed in the charged particle beam path of the system downstream of the source and can be displaced in a direction parallel to its main face; wherein the source, the first multi-aperture plate and the carrier are arranged such that a first number of charged particle beamlets is generated at a position downstream of both the first multi-aperture plate and the multi-aperture selector plate; and wherein the apertures of the multi-aperture selector plate have diameters, and wherein the diameters of the apertures of the third multi-aperture array are greater than the diameters of the apertures of the second multi-aperture array.