Appeal No. 1996-0189
Application No. 08/054,200
references to totally fill the hole structures with the
aluminum-containing composition. In addressing this
deficiency of the references, the examiner points to
appellants' specification which states at page 1 that "[h]ole
structures with a high aspect ratio, i.e., with an aspect
ratio of at least 10, particularly 50 through 200, cannot be
filled up in sputtering methods." Therefore, the examiner
concludes that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art that when sputtering processes of the type
disclosed by Wang and Lamont are applied to hole structures
having a high aspect ratio, appellants' claimed result of not
filling the lower region of the hole structures would
necessarily ensue.
The flaw in the examiner's reasoning, in addition to the
fact that the processes of the primary references are designed
to entirely fill the hole structures, is that the claimed
method defines a controlled process for producing a planar
surface on the aluminum-containing layer that only partially
fills the hole structures. There is simply no teaching or
suggestion in the primary references, or in any of the other
applied references, of a method which produces an aluminum-
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