The charged particle beam device 300 may further include an objective lens device 340 for focusing the charged particle beam 105 onto the specimen 310, and a detector 350 for detecting signal charged particles emitted by the specimen, e.g. secondary electrons and/or backscattered electrons.

The charged particle beam device 300 may include further beam optical components, e.g. a beam separator 345 configured to separate the signal charged particles emitted by the specimen from the primary charged particles of the charged particle beam 105, a scan deflector 346 for scanning the charged particle beam 105 over a surface of the specimen 310, and/or one or more beam limiting apertures 306 with one or more openings for the charged particle beam. In some embodiments, the charged particle beam device 300 is a multi-beamlet device, and the electrode arrangement 100 includes a set of coaxially aligned openings for each of the beamlets. In some embodiments, one or more multipole elements may be provided for at least one of focusing, deflecting, steering and correcting aberrations.

One or more beam influencing elements that include an electrode arrangement 100 as described herein may be provided, e.g. electrostatic and/or magnetic lenses, mirror correctors, electrostatic beam deflectors, and/or electrostatic multipole elements, e.g., quadrupoles, octupoles, or even higher-order multipoles.

FIG. 5 is a flow chart for illustrating a method of reducing an electric field strength in an electrode arrangement according to embodiments described herein.

In box 510, a charged particle beam is generated that propagates along an optical axis A.