Appeal No. 94-3000
Application 07/914,654
§ 1.192 (c)(7)(1993), we shall treat the claims separately.
The examiner has rejected process claims 17 through 20,
25 and 26 under § 103 as unpatentable over the combined
disclosures of Steck, Kremer and Kurokawa. As indicated by
the examiner at pages 2 and 3 of the answer, the Steck
reference discloses a method for rinsing and drying
substrates, such as silicon wafers. The silicon wafers are
initially submerged in a tank containing high purity, hot
deionized water. See Steck, column 2, lines 7-9. The hot
deionized water flowing in a laminar flow removes particulate
contaminants. See Steck, column 1, lines 54-60 and column 2,
lines 9-12. The resulting wafers are efficiently dried by
slowly withdrawing them from the tank. See Steck, column 4,
lines 4-15 and column 2, lines 19-21.
The examiner, however, recognized that Steck does not
disclose directly contacting the withdrawn wafers with a vapor
of an organic solvent during the drying step. See answer,
page 3. This recognition led to reliance on the Kremer and
Kurokawa references. The Kremer reference discloses a
conventional wafer drying technique employing vapor dryers
utilizing isopropyl alcohol as a drying agent after cleaning
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