Appeal No. 1998-0039
Application No. 08/372,701
prior art. As we construe step a) of claim 29 on appeal as it
would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art, in
light of appellant’s specification, the shield or hood area
reaches to the edge of the wafer or substrate and is not “cut
down” to allow for more and easier metal bridge formation.
See the specification, page 2, l. 23-page 3, l. 4; page 4, ll.
6-15; page 7, ll. 5-16 and Figure 2. Accordingly, the
“admitted prior art” as applied by the examiner does not
disclose or teach the limitations of claim 29 on appeal.
Additionally, as correctly argued by appellant (Brief,
pages 6-7), we note that both JP ‘961 and JP ‘672 teach the
use of low pressure in a first step followed by a high
pressure treatment, which is the reverse order of the claimed
process steps. Contrary to the examiner’s position that the
order of pressure treatment is immaterial as long as the
compressive and tensile stresses in the films complement each
other to form a zero stress film, JP ‘672 teaches that the
introductory pressure should be a low pressure of about 4
millitorr “for the purpose of preventing the mixing of Ar gas
and residual gas into the TiW film.” See the translation,
paragraph bridging pages 4-5. Furthermore, JP ‘961 teaches
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