DEVICE AND METHOD FOR SURFACE INSPECTION

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a surface inspection device and a surface inspection method, which can discriminate scratches in various shapes occurring on a surface of a processed object (for example, an insulator film on a semiconductor substrate) from foreign materials attached to the processed object, and perform inspection when the processed object is subjected to polishing or grinding processing such as CMP, in semiconductor manufacturing and magnetic head manufacturing.SOLUTION: The surface inspection method of the present invention performs epi-illumination and oblique illumination on scratches and foreign materials occurring on a surface of a polished or ground insulator film with substantially equal light flux, and detects a change in intensity of scattered light generated from shallow scratches and the foreign materials between the epi-illumination time and the oblique illumination time to thereby discriminate the shallow scratches from the foreign materials. The method further discriminates linear scratches from the foreign materials by detecting the directivity of the scattered light in the epi-illumination time. The device for the method is also provided.