Patent ID: 8294888

Claim:
An apparatus for inspecting a defect on a surface of a sample, comprising: rotatable and movable table means on which a sample is mounted; illumination means which irradiates a surface of the sample mounted on the table means with a laser; reflected light detection means which detects reflected light from the sample irradiated with the laser by the illumination means; and signal processing means which processes a signal output from the reflected light detection means by the detection of the reflected light and detecting a defect on the sample, wherein the reflected light detection means includes a scattering light detection unit which collects scattering light components of the reflected light from the sample by excluding specularly reflected light components by using an aspheric flannel lens which has a greater numerical aperture than a conventional optical lens when installing the conventional optical lens instead of the aspheric flannel lens and detects the scattering light components from a smaller defect than the conventional optical lens when installing the conventional optical lens instead of the aspheric flannel lens.