Appeal No. 95-0142
Application 07/817,961
The Ukai reference contains no teaching or suggestion of
using an inactive gas for purging patentee's processing vessel.
This fact militates against the examiner's position that it would
have been obvious to continue supplying the inactive gas of Jucha
during and after the wafer unloading/removing operation.
However, an even more serious deficiency is unquestionably fatal
to the examiner's obviousness position, namely, the examiner's
above-quoted statements of fact regarding the Ukai disclosure are
clearly erroneous.
Specifically, the "exhaustion" and "evacuating action"
referred to by the examiner do not occur "while the wafer is
being unloaded from the supporting surface and after the wafer is
removed from the etching chamber" as the examiner represents. To
the contrary, these conditions occur while the wafer is being
moved into, rather than removed from, the etching chamber. The
accuracy of this interpretation is most clearly and readily
evinced by Ukai's disclosure that "[s]uch an evacuating
action . . . serves to force absorbed gases on unetched
substrates into the atmosphere" (column 7, lines 1 through 4;
emphasis added). At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the
substrates or wafers would be "unetched" while being moved into
the etching chamber and would be etched while being removed from
the etching chamber.
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