Appeal No. 2005-1220
Application No. 09/270,606 Page 6
glycol, is beneficial in such a CMP slurry in improving colloidal
behavior and reducing or inhibiting the growth and/or coalescence
of particles in the slurry. See, e.g., column 3, lines 13-26,
column 4, lines 18-29 and column 6, lines 8-64 of Grover and
column 3, lines 32-39 and column 3, line 61 through column 4,
line 13 of Burke.
Furthermore, we agree with the examiner that the polishing
step of Kodera employing such a modified cerium oxide slurry
would have obviously resulted in Kodera employing high and low
area removal rates corresponding to the claimed rates upon
routine experimentation to determine the workable operating
parameters for the polishing given that substantially the same
polishing slurry is being used in a substantially similar way to
achieve substantially the same object of planarization of a
silicon dioxide layer including high and low structure areas
during a semiconductor CMP polishing step by both appellant and
Kodera. See In re Best, 562 F.2d 1252, 1255, 195 USPQ 430, 433-
34 (CCPA 1977).
With further regard to this matter, we note that
representative claim 1 calls for polishing rates such that low
structure areas are polished at a substantially zero rate and
high structure areas are polished at a rate approximating the
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