Abstract: Provided is a pattern inspection apparatus including: a charge formation means which forms charge on a surface of a substrate (7) by generating an electron beam from a second electron source (20) which is different from an electron source (1) which generates an electron beam before irradiating an electron beam (3), a current measuring means (34) which measures a value of current flowing in the substrate while the charge is formed on the surface of the substrate by the charge formation means; and an adjustment means (37) which adjusts the charge formed by the charge formation means so that the value of the current measured by the current measuring means is a predetermined target value. Provided is also a pattern inspection method which uses the pattern inspection apparatus. Thus, it is possible to easily set an optimal condition of precharge executed before inspection of a pattern formed by a semiconductor apparatus manufacturing process and automatically inspection whether the precharge is good.

Abstract: High-speed inspection is performed with appropriate sensitivity according to the pattern density and pattern characteristic of a device. The pixel dimension used in image acquisition is changed in accordance with the pattern density of a device. An image is acquired at high speed by changing the beam scan speed and the stage drive speed in accordance with the pixel dimension and eliminating an error by controlling the amount of beam delay. The acquired image is so resampled that the image dimensions of the acquired image and a reference image are equally sized, and the acquired image and the reference image are then aligned with each other. The aligned images are resampled in accordance with a preset pixel dimension to extract a difference between the images with the sensitivity according to the pixel dimension.

Abstract: Provided is a pattern inspection apparatus including: a charge formation means which forms charge on a surface of a substrate (7) by generating an electron beam from a second electron source (20) which is different from an electron source (I) which generates an electron beam before irradiating an electron beam (3), a current measuring means (34) which measures a value of current flowing in the substrate while the charge is formed on the surface of the substrate by the charge formation means; and an adjustment means (37) which adjusts the charge formed by the charge formation means so that the value of the current measured by the current measuring means is a predetermined target value. Provided is also a pattern inspection method which uses the pattern inspection apparatus. Thus, it is possible to easily set an optimal condition of precharge executed before inspection of a pattern formed by a semiconductor apparatus manufacturing process and automatically inspection whether the precharge is good.