Simulation software for designing electron and ion beam equipment

Electron and ion beam equipment play a vital role in the semiconductor manufacturing and nanotechnology industries. For designing new and better electron and ion beam columns for use at the cutting edge of these technologies, accurate and sophisticated simulation software is indispensable, and the development and improvement of such software has been one of our company’s main objectives for many years. In this paper, we review some of our recent software developments, with illustrative examples covering the design of electron guns, simulation of Coulomb interaction effects, multipole lenses and aberration correctors, multi-beam systems, LEEM (low energy electron microscopy), cathode lenses, magnetic prisms, electron mirrors, general curved axis elements, Wien filters and imaging energy filters.