Patent ID: 7459699

Claim:
A method for determining the processing position in a charged particle beam apparatus, comprising: disposing a semiconductor sample having a wiring pattern below a sample surface of the semiconductor sample, on a sample stage; moving the sample stage in order to get a processing/observation area on the wiring pattern in the charged particle beam apparatus below the sample surface into view field of an infrared microscope while observing a transmission image by the infrared microscope; performing a laser marking on the sample surface at a periphery of the processing/observation area before or after superposing an infrared microscope observation image containing the processing/observation area to a CAD data corresponding to the wiring pattern containing the processing/observation area; registering the processing/observation area and a position of the laser marking of the infrared microscope observation image onto the CAD data; observing a secondary charged particle image of the position of the laser marking in the charged particle beam apparatus; and positioning the processing/observation area by correlating the secondary charged particle image to the position of the laser marking on the CAD data that has been registered during the registering the processing/observation area.