A time-of-flight voltage contrast detector for measurements on VLSI circuits

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Abstract
The authors present developments in the design of a new type of voltage contrast detector. Voltage contrast measurements are made by recording transit times of secondary electrons as they are emitted from a specimen and collected above the final lens of an SEM. The study shows that such a voltage contrast detector can be designed to combine a high spatial resolution with a large field of view: voltage measurements using sub- mu m probe sizes can be maintained over a 6 mm by 6 mm square region. The detector is also predicted to have data-acquisition times that are at least a factor of 30 times shorter than those of conventional retarding field-type detectors. The detector is expected to sample waveforms in its normal multi-stroboscopic mode of operation at frequencies up to 20 MHz.