Patent attributes
A multibeam type scanning microscope that has N beams, wherein the system is devised so that the respective beams perform scanning in LM stages in the Y direction at maximum magnification where the discrete scanning direction is the Y direction, thus performing scanning in an area of N×LM stages overall, and scanning is controlled so that the following processes (1) and (2) are successively repeated LK times at a magnification that is 1/LK times the maximum magnification. Here, L, M and N are integers of 2 or greater, and K is a natural number.(1) The respective beams perform scanning in the Y direction at a sampling interval that is LK times that at the maximum magnification.(2) When scanning of LM-K stages is completed in the Y direction, and the repetition is less than the LKth time, the scanning skips ((N−1)×LM-K+1) stages.
