Appeal No. 1998-2887
Application No. 08/630,111
The examiner acknowledges (Final rejection, page 3) that
“the admitted Prior Art Figures 1-5 fail to teach an amorphous
silicon layer and a gate conducting plug.” According to the
examiner (Answer, page 5):
Kobayashi et al was used to show that the level of
ordinary skill in the art includes knowledge of
forming a contact through an aperture in an
amorphous silicon layer (16). . . . Krishna was
used to show that the level of ordinary skill in the
art includes knowledge of forming a contact to a
polysilicon layer (20) through an aperture in an
insulating layer. Hence, the two missing features
in Applicants’ Admitted Prior Art Figures are
provided by the two references.
The examiner concludes (Answer, page 5) that “it would
have been obvious to use a contact to a polysilicon layer
through an opening in an insulating layer and an amorphous
silicon layer in view of the teachings of Kobayashi et al and
Krishna.”
Appellants argue (Brief, pages 7 and 8) that the applied
references do not teach applicants’ plug structure, namely,
the larger contact opening aligned over the other opening so
that “[w]hen the metal plug 24 (Fig. 8) is formed in the
opening 6 (and 4), the exposed P amorphous layer 18 in+
opening 6 and the exposed N polysilicon layer 14 in opening 4+
4
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