Patent ID: 7205549

Claim:
A pattern defect inspection apparatus comprising: a recipe setting unit for setting an inspection recipe and/or a review recipe; an illumination optical system including: a laser light source for emitting ultraviolet laser light; a shutter for selectively restricting passage of the ultraviolet laser light emitted from the laser light source; a quantity-of-light adjusting unit for adjusting a quantity of the ultraviolet laser light emitted from the laser light source in accordance with the inspection recipe and/or the review recipe set by the recipe setting unit; an illumination range forming unit for forming on a sample an illumination range of the ultraviolet laser light whose quantity has been adjusted by the quantity-of-light adjusting unit; a coherence reducing system for reducing coherence of the ultraviolet laser light received within the illumination range that has been formed by the illumination range forming unit; and an irradiation optical system for irradiating the sample with a ultraviolet light flux whose coherence has been reduced by the coherence reducing system; and a detection optical system including; a condensing optical system for condensing light reflected from the sample; a diffracted-light control optical system for controlling diffracted light of the reflected light that has been condensed by the condensing optical system; and a detecting unit for imaging a reflected light image coming from the sample to detect an image signal, said reflected light image being obtained through the diffracted-light control optical system; wherein the shutter opens when part of an area of the sample to be inspected is in a viewing field of the detection optical system and closes when the area to be inspected is out of the viewing field.