Rapid data acquisition for e-beam testing

A system (EBT 2000) for increasing the speed of signal acquisition in electron-beam testing is described. The system produces a number of beam unblanking pulses per test cycle in a manner similar to that used by sampling oscilloscopes. A new waveform recovery system has been designed that gives throughput improvements of up to 1000 times. Stroboscopic image acquisition times are also improved by a factor of up to 64. The increased speed of data acquisition generally enhances instrument applications, while the implementation of burst mode imaging will specifically improve techniques such as dynamic fault imaging, which depend upon the bulk acquisition of stroboscopic images