Quantitative measurement of surface potential and amount of charging on insulator surface under electron beam irradiation

Surface potential and the amount of charging on an insulator surface under electron beam irradiation have been quantitatively measured. For these measurements, a special sample holder was developed. The surface potential was measured using a secondary electron method. The measurement of the surface potential revealed that the sample behaves as a resistor, enabling the present technique to be applied for mapping microarea resistance. The results of measuring the amount of charging revealed that the amounts of charging obtained with different beam currents are the same in spite of different surface potentials. This strongly suggests that the charging phenomenon depends on the distribution of the charge trapping sites. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.