About Us

Our History

Munro’s Electron Beam Software Ltd was founded by Eric Munro, John Rouse and Xieqing Zhu in July 1991, and registered as a United Kingdom company.  Xieqing is now enjoying his retirement, but three members of the original team, Eric, John and Haoning (pictured on the left) are still active within the company. Our founding members have devoted their working lives to developing electron optical design software, and all our employees have specialised scientific training in physics and electron optics.  Our company’s mission is to develop and provide software for simulation, design and optimisation of charged particle optical systems, especially electron microscopes, and equipment for semiconductor manufacturing industry, such as electron and ion beam lithography and inspection systems.

Our Software

Our software is used worldwide by many electron microscope manufacturers and by manufacturers of charged particle optical equipment for the semiconductor industry.  Current nanotechnology devices have critical dimensions of the order of nanometers, so electron beam lithography and inspection systems are becoming ever more indispensable.

On the computational side, we have contributed to advances in finite element methods for field computation, differential algebraic methods for simulating high-order aberrations, multipole systems, electron mirrors and curved axis systems, and n-body Monte Carlo methods for simulating discrete Coulomb interaction effects.

Scientific Development

On a scientific level, we have contributed greatly to the development of the subject, including advances in aberration theory, theory of combined electron lenses and deflectors, multipole lenses, electron guns, discrete Coulomb interactions, asymmetry aberrations and tolerancing, analysis of 3D fields and trajectories, electron mirrors, omega filters, monochromators, etc., and have published over 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.  We have always maintained close links with academia and research activities, including organizing electron optics conferences and teaching graduate courses in electron optics. Our software is at the forefront of design and optimization tools for such equipment

Our Customers

We have a broad customer base in Europe, United States and Asia

Because of the specialized nature of electron optical design, our philosophy is to provide a customized service to meet the needs of individual clients. We are happy to discuss specific requirements and to provide expert guidance, specialized software and support.

Consultancy

As well as developing design software, we also offer consultancy services for design of electron and ion beam equipment. With a rapidly growing demand for this specialized consultancy work, we set up our sister company MCS (Munro’s Consultancy Services Ltd) in June 1998, specifically to handle design work for clients. Through MCS, we have applied our software and simulation techniques to designing a wide range of electron optical systems and components, including electron and ion microscopes, electron beam lithography and inspection equipment, photomultiplier tubes, electron beam welding equipment, microwave tubes, Auger spectrometers, Wien filters, topographic and voltage contrast detectors, magnetic prisms, bending magnets, X-ray sourcecs and imaging energy filters.

Training and Education

Through MCS, we also offer lecture courses on charged particle optics, and training courses in the use of our software, either at our own premises in London or at customers’ sites. We also provide video presentations which showcase our software and provide additional training.