Patent ID: 8223328

Claim:
A surface inspection apparatus comprising: an illumination unit which irradiates linearly polarized light onto a surface of an inspection substrate having a predetermined repeating pattern; an imaging unit which captures an image of the inspection substrate formed by polarization components having an oscillation direction that is different from that of the linearly polarized light as part of the reflected light from the surface of the inspection substrate irradiated by the linearly polarized light; a setting unit which sets a plurality of inspection conditions for at least one of an illumination condition in the illumination unit and an imaging condition in the imaging unit; and an information processing unit which calculates respective signal intensities for portions in each of a plurality of images of the inspection substrate captured by the imaging unit under the plurality of inspection conditions, which compares the signal intensities of corresponding portions from the plurality of images of the inspection substrate, and which generates inspection information of the inspection substrate from information of a portion having a smallest signal intensity.