Patent ID: 7777183

Claim:
A charged particle beam system comprising: a sample stage movable with a wafer mounted thereon; a sample chamber enclosing the sample stage; an electron beam column connected to the sample chamber and having an electron source and an electron beam optical system for focusing an electron beam drawn from the electron source and scanning and irradiating the wafer with the electron beam; an ion beam column connected to the sample chamber and having a nonmetal gas ion source, which generates a nonmetal gas so that liquid metal ion source contamination of the wafer does not occur, and an ion beam optical system for irradiating the wafer with an ion beam drawn from the gas ion source; a sample signal detector for detecting a sample signal for generating a microscope image that is obtained by irradiating the wafer with the electron beam from the electron beam column or the ion beam from the ion beam column; an image generator for generating an electron microscope image or an ion microscope image by acquiring a detection signal from the sample signal detector; an optical microscope disposed in the sample chamber such that an ion beam target position of the ion beam column is within the view field of the optical microscope; an image generator for generating an optical microscope image of the wafer by acquiring condition data from the optical microscope; and a probe movable within the view field of the optical microscope at or around an ion beam target position of the ion beam column for holding a piece extracted from the wafer by ion beam irradiation; wherein the electron beam column and the ion beam column are disposed such that the beam target position of the electron beam and that of the ion beam are spaced apart from each other.