Patent ID: 8507857

Claim:
A charged particle beam inspection apparatus comprising: an electron gun for emitting an electron beam; a first condenser lens and a second condenser lens used for focusing the electron beam; a beam control panel for controlling the electron beam passing there through and is provided between the first condenser lens and the second condenser lens; and a control unit for performing stabilizing processing that stabilizes a potential on a surface of a sample by the following operations: an excitation current to be supplied to the first condenser lens is set to be smaller than the excitation current supplied thereto for a measurement of dimension of the sample to increase a focal distance of the first condenser lens, and; an excitation current to be supplied to the second condenser lens is set to be larger than the excitation current supplied thereto for the measurement to regulate a focal distance of the second condenser lens to be equal to a focal distance thereof for the measurement, thereby a current amount of the electron beam passing through an opening of the beam control panel is regulated so that the electron beam to be emitted onto the sample has a larger current amount than that at the measurement, and then the electron beam is emitted onto the sample for a predetermined time period, thereby stabilizing the potential on the surface of the sample.