METHOD OF AUTOMATICALLY CORRECTING MAGNIFICATION AND NON-LINEARITY OF SCANNING ELECTRON MICROSCOPE

A method of automatically correcting magnification and/or non linearity of scanning electron microscope has the steps of loading a reference material in the microscope, inputting a pitch of the reference material and a nominal magnification of the microscope, obtaining an image of the reference material, determining a pitch and/or a linearity of the image of the reference material, comparing the pitch of the image with the inputted pitch of the reference material to obtain a ratio indicative of the magnification and/or comparing the magnification in different locations across an image field indicative of the linearity, comparing the thusly determined magnification with the nominal magnification, and if an error of magnification exceeds a predetermined value, adjusting the scanning electron microscope.