Appeal No. 1998-2308
Application No. 08/379,868
To account for this difference, the examiner relies on the
teachings of Scobey. (Examiner’s answer, page 7.) Specifically,
Scobey teaches as follows:
In a presently preferred approach for forming thin
film coatings including refractory metal coatings and
optical quality dielectric coatings such as metal oxide
coatings, our invention uses an in-line translational
processing configuration, or a cylindrical processing
configuration in which substrates are mounted on a
rotating cylindrical drum carrier, or on a rotating
planetary gear carrier, or on a continuous moving web. The
substrates are moved past a set of processing stations
comprising (1) at least one preferably linear cathode
plasma generating device (e.g., a planar magnetron or a
Shatterproof rotating magnetron) operating in a metal
deposition mode for depositing silicon, tantalum, etc.,
alternated or sequenced with (2) a similar device such as
a planar magnetron operating in a reactive plasma mode, or
an ion gun or other ion source configured to produce an
elongated uniform high intensity ion flux adjacent the
periphery of the carrier, for generating an intense
reactive plasma, using oxygen or other reactive gases
including but not limited to nitrogen, hydrogen or gaseous
oxides of carbon. The arrangement provides long narrow
zones for both deposition and reaction with complete
physical separation of the zone boundaries. When similar
magnetron cathodes are used, one is operated using a
relatively low partial pressure of the reactive gas
(such as oxygen) to provide the metal deposition mode
while the other is operated at a relatively higher
reactive gas partial pressure to generate the intense
reactive plasma for oxidation, etc. [Col. 3, ll. 13-42.]
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