The design of a 100-beam source for high-resolution applications is presented, comprising a Schottky emitter, an aperture lens array, an accelerator lens, and a conjugate blanker array. The beamlets emerge at 30 kV, compatible with most scanning electron microscope-type systems commercially available. The aberrations due to the aperture lens array and the accelerator lens are carefully minimized. For a Schottky source with a brightness of 1.5x10(8) A/m(2) sr V, the multibeam source is designed to allow a transmission of more than 1000 nA current to the reduction optics with uniform spot sizes. (c) 2007 American Vacuum Society.