Appeal No. 1999-0875
Application No. 08/467,353
The respective positions of the examiner and the
appellants with regard to the propriety of this rejection are
set forth in the examiner’s answer (Paper No. 14) and the
appellants’ brief and reply brief (Paper Nos. 13 and 15,
respectively).
Appellants’ Invention
To form a capacitor, a trench 23 is formed in a
semiconductor layer 10 (Fig. 2). Layer 10 forms a plate of
the capacitor and it may be common to a plurality of
capacitors or other circuit elements in a single chip. Collar
41 is formed in the trench by an isotropic deposition of an
oxide, nitride or other suitable dielectric layer (Fig. 4).
The remainder of the trench is then filled with semiconductor
material 51 to form an opposing capacitor plate (Fig. 5).
Additional fabrication steps involving heat treatment are
performed on the structure. During heat treatment and other
processing steps, differential volume expansion may occur
between the collar 41 and semiconductor material 51 which
3–
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