Charged Particle Beam Device and Information-Processing Device

• US 20170345614A1
• Filed: 10/22/2015
• Published: 11/30/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 10/28/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi High-Tech Company Limited (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Hitachi High-Technologies Corporation (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Inventors: KIMURA, Yoshinobu, TSUNO, Natsuki, AGEMURA, Toshihide, OGASHIWA, Takeshi, TOMIZAWA, Junichiro
• Granted Patent: US 10,453,648 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: H01J 2237/2443 Scintillation detectors
• CPC Class Codes: H01J 2237/2448 Secondary particle detectors
• CPC Class Codes: H01J 2237/24495 Signal processing, e.g. mixing of two or more signals
• CPC Class Codes: H01J 2237/24507 Intensity, dose or other characteristics of particle beams or electromagnetic radiation
• CPC Class Codes: H01J 37/06 Electron sources; Electron guns electron sources in general H01J1/02, H01J19/02; electron guns in general H01J3/02
• CPC Class Codes: H01J 37/222 Image processing arrangements associated with the tube image data processing or generation, in general G06T
• CPC Class Codes: H01J 37/244 Detectors; Associated components or circuits therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H01J 37/28 with scanning beams H01J37/268, H01J37/292, H01J37/2955 take precedence

Abstract

There is provided a charged particle beam apparatus capable of obtaining a high SN ratio with a small electron irradiation amount. The charged particle beam apparatus includes a charged particle detection device. The charged particle detection device detects an analog pulse waveform signal (110) in a detection of emitted electrons (1 event) when one primary electron enters a sample, converts the analog pulse waveform signal (110) into a digital signal (111), perform a wave height discrimination (112) with the use of a unit peak corresponding electron, and outputs the digital signal (111) as a multilevel count value.

Claims

1. A charged particle beam apparatus comprising:

a stage on which a sample is placed;

a charged particle beam optical system that irradiates the sample with a charged particle beam; and

a charged particle detection device that detects charged particles secondarily generated from the sample,

wherein the charged particle detection device includes;

a photoelectric conversion unit that converts the charged particles from the sample into photons and converts the photons into an analog electric signal,

an analog-to-digital conversion unit that converts the analog electrical signal into a digital signal, and

an arithmetic unit that counts the digital signal, and

the calculation unit multi-values a signal per unit time in the digital signal with the use of a unit peak value related to one event generated when the sample is irradiated with one charged particle and outputs the multi-valued signal as a multilevel count value.

2. The charged particle beam apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the arithmetic unit outputs an integrated value of the multilevel count values in each pixel of a sample image as a pixel signal.

3. The charged particle beam apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the arithmetic unit discriminates between a first group in which the multilevel count value is smaller than a predetermined threshold value and a second group in which the multilevel count value is equal to or larger than the predetermined threshold value, and outputs an accumulated value of the first group and an integrated value of the second group as a pixel signal.

4. The charged particle beam apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the arithmetic unit executes a predetermined statistical process on the multilevel count value and outputs a result of the statistical process.

5. The charged particle beam apparatus according to claim 4,

wherein the result of the statistical process includes at least one of a histogram, an average, and a dispersion of the multilevel count value.

6. The charged particle beam, apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the arithmetic unit outputs an estimated count value in each pixel of a sample image as a pixel signal with the use of a statistical model created in advance.

7. The charged particle beam apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the arithmetic unit outputs an integrated value including a part of adjacent pixels for each pixel of a sample image as a pixel signal.

8. The charged particle beam apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein when it is assumed that a current of the charged particle beam is I and an elemental charge is e, a frequency band f of an analog amplification in the photoelectric conversion unit is equal to or larger than 10×

I/e, and a sampling frequency f₂ of the analog-to-digital conversion unit is equal to or larger than 2×

f₁.

9. The charged particle beam apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the charged particle beam optical system blocks the charged particle beam and irradiates the sample with pulsed charged particles, and

deflection control of the pulsed charged particles in the charged particle beam optical system and detection control of the emitted pulsed charged particles from the sample in the charged particle detection device are synchronized with each other.

10. The charged particle beam apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the charged particle beam apparatus is a scanning electron microscope.

11. An information processing apparatus comprising:

an input unit that inputs detection information obtained by detecting the charged particles caused by the sample irradiated with the charged particle beam as a current value or a voltage value; and

a determination unit that makes first determination of dividing the detection information into a first state, a second state, and a third state based on arbitrary first and second threshold values determined by a current value or a voltage value.

12. The information processing apparatus according to claim 11,

wherein the first state is a state in which the charged particles are not detected,

the second state is a state in which one of the charged particles is detected, and

the third state is a state in which two or more of the charged particles are detected.

13. The information processing apparatus according to claim 11,

wherein the charged particles are electrons measured by a scanning electron microscope.

14. The information processing apparatus according to claim 11,

wherein the second threshold value is determined according to a type of the sample or a type of the charged particles.

15. The information processing apparatus according to claim 11,

wherein the determination unit makes second determination of dividing the detection information into the first state and the second state based on the first threshold value, and

the information processing apparatus further includes a GUI that displays a measurement image of the sample based on the first determination and a measurement image of the sample based on the second determination.