Patent ID: 8400629

Claim:
A surface defect inspection apparatus comprising: a stage that holds an inspection sample; an illumination optical system that linearly irradiates a beam onto a surface of the inspection sample, and forms a line illumination region on the inspection sample surface; at least one detection optical system that detects scattered light from the line illumination region on the inspection sample surface; and a detection unit that converts scattered light from the line illumination region detected by the detection optical system into an electrical signal; wherein the stage is moved in a longitudinal direction of the line illumination region on the inspection sample surface at a feed pitch shorter than a longitudinal length of the line illumination region, and wherein the feed pitch is variable, wherein the illumination optical system is configured to perform a plurality of linear laser beams irradiations onto a same region of the inspection sample; wherein the at least one detection optical system detects a plurality of scattered lights scattered from the plurality of linear laser beams; and wherein the detection unit converts the plurality of scattered lights to a plurality of electrical signals.