Scanning Electron Microscope Simulation, Charging Validation, and Improvements

AMAG NanoMetro currently sells SimuSEM, a powerful software package which simulates electron beam/solid interactions and generates simulated electron beam microscope images. AMAG SimuSEM uses the Monte Carlo method and material scattering models to track electron scattering within a sample. The physics models evolved from NIST’s JMONSEL, but the code has been rewritten to optimize performance, and it has been combined with a customized GUI which facilitates simulations of user-defined geometries with customized beam parameters. The current version models detailed physics of electron-solid interactions, but does not include charging effects or magnetic interactions. In its current version it has been sold to several leading companies, but many customers need charging to model their samples. In this project, we will image structures which exhibit charging (such as silicon dioxide lines on a silicon substrate), and compare them to SimuSEM results. The comparison will be used to refine the SimuSEM charging model. In addition, we propose to add magnetic field and roughness effects to the simulation to more accurately produce realistic images.