Appeal No. 95-3611
Application 07/904,419
wafer to the combined vapor. This appealed subject matter is
adequately illustrated by independent claim 1 which reads as
follows:
1. A method for vapor phase wafer cleaning, comprising
the steps of:
combining hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride and
water vapor; and
exposing the wafer to said combined vapor.
The references relied upon by the examiner in the rejections
before us are:
Tanaka 5,078,832 Jan. 7, 1992
Deal, ?Vapor-Phase Wafer Cleaning, Oxide Etching, and Thin Film
Growth?, Paper presented at First International Symposium on
Cleaning Technology in Semiconductor Device Manufacturing at the
Fall Meeting of The Electrochemical Society in Hollywood,
Florida, pages 1-8, October 15-20, 1989.
Claim 1 stands rejected under 35 USC § 102(b) as being
anticipated by Deal.
Claims 2 through 15 stand rejected under 35 USC § 103 as
being unpatentable over Deal in view of Tanaka.
We will not sustain either of these rejections.
Both of the rejections before us are pivotally founded upon
2
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