Patent ID: 6909791

Claim:
A method of determining a line edge roughness of a micro object, comprising the steps of orienting a micro object in a microscope so that an edge of an object to be analyzed is non parallel to a direction of a scan line which is an axis X of an image; line-by-line scanning of the object to be measured with electron beam and measuring of a dependency of a video signal S from a coordinate x along a scanning line as a function S(x) for each line; determining a coordinate of an edge X E on the function S(x) for each line to form a set of values X E (i) wherein (i) is a number of line; approximation of said set of values X E (i) with a linear function and calculation of parameters A and B in an equation: X ( i )= A*i+B, which approximates the set of values X E ; calculation for each line an individual deviation Δx(i) of a position of an edge from a straight line along a direction of the scan (axis X): Δ x ( i )= X ( i )− X E ( i ); wherein X(i) is an X coordinate of a line of intersection of an approximating line with a scan line having number (i); calculating for each scan line an individual deviation Δl(i) of a position of the edge from a straight line in a direction of a perpendicular line to the approximating straight line in accordance with the formula: Δ ⁢ ⁢ 1 ⁢ ( i ) = Δ ⁢ ⁢ x ⁡ ( i ) A 2 + 1 ; and using the thusly obtained set of values Δl(i) for evaluation of a line edge roughness of the micro object.