Patent Document ID: 9972079
Application ID: 14889986
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A wafer appearance inspection apparatus comprising: a light source that irradiates light to an inspection target wafer; a light detector that detects light reflected from the inspection target wafer; an image processor that converts, into an image, the light detected by the light detector; an image display portion; an operation portion that inputs an operational instruction; and an operation control portion that performs: defining, as a template image, a part of an image distortion editing wafer for which image processing is performed by the image processor; pattern match processing with an entire image of the image editing wafer using the template image; computing a pixel deviation of the image of the image editing wafer; editing the image of the inspection target wafer using the computed pixel deviation; determining an image region indicated by the operation portion; searching an image region, a surface profile pattern of which is similar to a surface profile pattern of the determined image region, from among other image regions of the edited inspection target wafer, and displaying the searched image region on the image display portion; and setting a sensitivity threshold for the image region indicated by the operation portion, such that an appearance of the wafer is inspected based on the sensitivity threshold set by the operation control portion.