Appeal No. 96-0384 Page 4
Application No. 08/106,252
The examiner relies on Jack for essentially disclosing
the claimed process including the use of a cadmium telluride
capping layer for a mercury cadmium telluride substrate and
annealing the capped substrate to support diffusion of an
implanted chemical species from the capping layer into the
substrate. The examiner acknowledges that Jack does not
expressly teach that the capping layer should be tellurium
rich (answer, pages 3 and 4). According to the examiner
(answer, pages 4 and 5), however, the claimed process herein
would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill
in the art from the teachings of the applied references since
rendering the capping layer of Jack tellurium rich by doping
the layer with tellurium is suggested by Basol's teaching
(column 2, lines 51-62) of using excess tellurium in the
telluride layers of semiconductor processing materials
together with Jack's teaching of the use of an implant
chemical that is added to the capping layer to form a region
having a different composition or chemical concentration in
the substrate by virtue of diffusion during the disclosed
annealing step. We agree.
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