Patent ID: 7181060

Claim:
A defect inspection method comprising the steps of: applying a focused electron beam onto a sample and conducting scanning; detecting secondary electrons generated from an inspection subject region of said sample at the focused electron beam applying step by using detectors installed in a plurality of directions, thereby obtaining external appearance images of the inspection subject region of said sample picked up from the plurality of directions; picking up images of a comparison subject region designed so as to originally have an external appearance identical with that of the inspection subject region of said sample from a plurality of directions identical with those of the inspection subject region, thereby obtaining external appearance images of the comparison subject region picked up from the plurality of directions; correcting mis-registrations between the external appearance images of the inspection subject region of said sample picked up from the plurality of directions and the external appearance images of the comparison subject region picked up from the plurality of directions that respectively correspond to the external appearance images of the inspection subject region picked up from the plurality of directions; and detecting defects of the inspection subject region by using the external appearance images of the inspection subject region of said sample picked up from the plurality of directions and the external appearance images of the comparison subject region picked up from the plurality of directions corrected in mis-registrations, wherein the step of correcting the mis-registrations comprises the substeps of: mixing two perspective images obtained by picking up an image of the inspection subject region of said sample from each of two opposed directions with a non-directional electron image, thereby synthesizing a first mixed image; mixing two perspective images obtained by picking up an image of the comparison subject region of said sample from each of the two opposed directions with a non-directional electron image, thereby synthesizing a second mixed image; and comparing the first mixed image with the second mixed image, thereby obtaining mis-registration quantities respectively between the two perspective images and the non-directional electron image of the inspection subject region of said sample and the two perspective images and the non-directional electron image of the comparison subject region.