Patent ID: 6924488

Claim:
A charged-particle beam instrument equipped with an aberration corrector and adapted to focus a charged-particle beam onto a specimen, said instrument comprising: said aberration corrector disposed inside optics of the instrument and having four stages of electrostatic quadrupole elements including two central quadrupole elements and two stages of magnetic quadrupole elements for superimposing a magnetic potential distribution analogous to an electric potential distribution created by said two central quadrupole elements on this electric potential distribution; a power supply for supplying voltages to said four stages of electrostatic quadrupole elements and a power supply for supplying currents to said two stages of magnetic quadrupole elements; an objective lens positioned downstream of the aberration corrector and acting to focus the charged-particle beam directed at the specimen; a power supply for said objective lens; a transfer lens system consisting of at least one stage of transfer lens located between the aberration corrector and the objective lens and acting to transfer an image plane formed by the aberration corrector to the position of the object plane of the objective lens; a power supply for the transfer lens system; a manual input operation device for modifying at least one of an accelerating voltage for imparting a given energy to said charged-particle beam and a working distance that is the distance between the objective lens and the specimen; and a controller for controlling the power supply for the four stages of electrostatic quadrupole elements, the power supply for the two stages of magnetic quadrupole elements, the power supply for the objective lens, and the power supply for the transfer lens system according to operation or setting on the manual input operation device.