Patent ID: 7714289

Claim:
A charged particle beam apparatus having an electron gun, two or more stages of condenser lens for finely focusing and irradiating a primary charged particle beam emitted from said electron gun on a specimen, deflectors for two-dimensionally scanning said primary charged particle beam on said specimen, signal detectors for detecting a signal generated from said specimen by irradiation of said primary charged particle beam, and an image display unit for displaying, as images, signals of said signal detectors, said apparatus comprising: voltage controllers for controlling an extraction voltage applied across a cathode of said electron gun and an extraction electrode for the primary charged particle beam and an accelerating voltage applied across said cathode and an accelerating electrode for accelerating said primary charged particle beam; a condenser lens excitation control unit for controlling the lens excitation of said condenser lens; and a virtual cathode calculation unit for determining focal status on the basis of the lens excitation of said condenser lens selected to minimize the image movement amount on a screen of the image display unit when the lens excitation of the condenser lens is changed through plural points and for calculating a virtual cathode position by using the lens excitation of the condenser lens determined by the focal status; wherein said condenser lens excitation control unit controls a crossover position of the primary charged particle beam by the virtual cathode position calculated by said virtual cathode calculation unit.