Patent ID: 7385165

Claim:
A multibeam type scanning microscope that has N beams, wherein the system is devised so that the respective beams perform scanning in L M stages in the Y direction at maximum magnification where the continuous scanning direction is the X direction and the discrete scanning direction is the Y direction, thus performing scanning in an area of N×L M stages overall, and scanning is controlled so that the following processes (1) and (2) are successively repeated L K times at a magnification that is 1/L K times the maximum magnification; where, L, M and N are integers of 2 or greater, and K is a natural number; (1) the respective beams perform scanning in the Y direction at a sampling interval that is L K times that at the maximum magnification; (2) when scanning of L M-K stages is completed in the Y direction, and the repetition is less than the L K th time, the scanning skips ((N−1)×L M-K +1) stages.