Further advancing the throughput of a multi-beam SEM

Multiple electron beam SEMs enable detecting structures of few nanometer in diameter at much higher throughputs than possible with single beam electron microscopes at comparable electron probe parameters. Although recent multiple beam SEM development has already demonstrated a large speed increase(1), higher throughputs are still required to match the needs of many semiconductor applications(2). We demonstrate the next step in the development of multi-beam SEMs by increasing the number of beams and the current per beam. The modularity of the multi-beam concept ensures that design changes in the multi-beam SEM are minimized.