| 摘要 |
PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a defect inspecting method and apparatus with easy sensitivity adjustment capable of both inspecting locational deviation in an image to be inspected, image distortion, etc., by considering brightness between the images and of reducing misreports and highly sensitively detecting defects only by setting a threshold value in defect inspection for comparing the image to be inspected with a reference image and detecting the defects from their difference. SOLUTION: Correction is performed in such a way as to reduce the difference between the image to be inspected and the reference image according to the contrast of the image. On a micro locational deviation part, reduction in the occurrence of misreports and highly sensitive inspection are implemented by a single low threshold value on a whole area to be inspected by a means for especially intensively computing overall brightness between the images as necessary. In the case that an object to be inspected is a semiconductor wafer, by the computing means for previously computing the brightness difference between the images caused by the difference of a film thickness in the wafer, it is possible to avoid the occurrence of misreports due to brightness irregularities without reduction in sensitivity and easily perform sensitivity adjustment by the single threshold value. |
