Patent ID: 7825386

Claim:
A charged particle beam apparatus, comprising: a charged particle source for generating a primary charged particle beam; at least one condenser lens for pre-focusing the primary charge particle beam; a compound objective lens for forming a magnetic field and an electrostatic field to focus the primary charged particle beam onto a specimen in a charged particle beam path, the specimen including a specimen surface, the compound objective lens including a conical magnetic lens, an immersion magnetic lens, and an electrostatic lens, the conical magnetic lens including an upper pole piece, a shared pole piece being electrically insulated from the upper pole piece, and a first excitation coil, a bottom surface of the shared pole piece being approximately 1 to 8 millimeters from the specimen, the shared pole piece being characterized by a bore diameter of approximately 1 to 30 millimeters; a detection system for detecting charged particles or X-ray emanated from the specimen; an ExB filter for aligning or bending the charged particles to the detector; a deflection system for deflecting the primary charged particle beam over the specimen surface to form a scanning pattern; and a stage system for supporting and moving the specimen.