Patent ID: 8822920

Claim:
A charged particle beam apparatus comprising: a specimen stage configured to transfer a specimen; a charged particle optical system configured to irradiate a charged particle beam generated from a charged particle beam source to the specimen; a control unit configured to control the charged particle optical system and the specimen stage; a detector configured to detect secondary particles generated from the specimen by the irradiation of the charged particle beam; an image processing unit configured to generate an image of the specimen from the secondary particles; a scanning area setting unit configured to set a scanning area of the charged particle beam, in a charge control process to control the charge condition on the specimen; an operation unit configured to group a plurality of observation target portions included in the scanning area into groups, based on a magnification on which the charge control process is to be executed, or a size of the scanning area scanned by the charged particle beam used in the charge control process, wherein all observation target positions included in one of the groups are processed together in one charge control process; and wherein the image processing unit is configured to generate a plurality of images on the basis of a piece of charge control processing executed on the scanning area.