Appeal No. 2004-1853 Page 3
Application No. 09/983,625
before us for review, we find ourselves in agreement with
appellants’ position in that the examiner has failed to carry the
burden of establishing a prima facie case of anticipation.
Accordingly, we will not sustain the examiner’s stated rejection.
All of the claims on appeal are drawn to a method wherein a
nickel silicide layer is disposed on source/drain regions of a
substrate after those regions were activated via laser thermal
annealing. See appealed independent claims 1 and 11.
In the Section 102(b) rejection set forth in the answer, the
examiner asserts that the laser thermal annealing of the lightly
doped junctions (13) of Chong (column 4, lines 21-25) to form
shallow source and drain extensions (14) meets appellants’
claimed step of laser thermal annealing source/drain regions. In
maintaining that assertion, the examiner takes the view that the
claimed source/drain regions correspond to or read on the lightly
doped junctions or drains (13) of Chong. In this regard, the
examiner seems to be of the opinion that the claimed source/drain
regions “may be anticipated by the sub-part ‘source/drain’
extension” (answer, page 8).
Appellants, on the other hand, have argued, inter alia, that
the lightly doped junctions (13) of Chong “are source/drain
extensions and not source/drain regions” (brief, page 4).
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007