Design and Experiment of A Multi-beam Electron Source

To enhance the throughput of the single-beam instrumentation such as scanning electron microscopes, we developed a multi-beam electron source system employing a Schottky emitter. The system consists of three key components: a collimator lens, an aperture array and a micro-arrayed Einzel lens. An experimental prototype was constructed to validate the performance of the multi-beam electron source, enabling successful evaluation of a 3 × 3 electron beam array. Experimental results indicate that the collimated spot size was measured to be 600 μm with a current density uniformity of 6.06%. Subsequent focusing achieved beamlet diameters averaging 5.32 μm with a dimensional uniformity of 5.91% and a pitch uniformity of 3.06%. These parameters satisfy the critical design specification requiring all uniformity threshold to remain below 10%.