Patent 7514682 was granted and assigned to Applied Materials on April, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Methods and apparatus to facilitate the measurement of the amount of scattered electrons collected by an anti-fogging baffle arrangement are provided. For some embodiments, by affixing a lead to an electrically isolated (floating) portion of the baffle arrangement, the amount of scattered electrons collected thereby may be read out, for example, as a current signal. Thus, for such embodiments, the baffle arrangement may double as a detector, allowing an image of surface (e.g., a mask or substrate surface) to be generated.