Appeal No. 96-1313
Application 08/202,536
application, have been withdrawn from consideration by the
examiner as being directed toward a nonelected invention.
THE INVENTION
Appellants’ claimed invention is directed toward an
electroless metal plating method wherein a substrate is
immersed in a bath which contains water, a soluble source of
metal ions, a soluble source of mediator ions which are
different from the metal ions and are selected from a recited
Markush group, a complexing agent for at least the metal ions,
and a reducing agent for the mediator ions. Claim 10 is 2,3
2Regarding the reducing agent, appellants’ specification
states (page 5, lines 15-20) that the bath “includes a
chemical reducing agent which is chosen to primarily reduce
the mediator ions at the substrate surface of interest, not
the metal ions ultimately intended to be reduced at, and
deposited onto, the substrate surface of interest. (This
chemical reducing agent may, to a lesser degree, necessarily
and/or unavoidably also serve to reduce some of the metal ions
at the substrate surface of interest.)”
3Appellants state in their specification (page 6, line 30
- page 7, line 3), that “it is hypothesized that the mediator
metal, e.g., palladium, reduced at, and deposited onto, the
surface of the substrate metallic layer serves to catalyze the
oxidation of the reducing agent at the surface of the
substrate metallic layer. This oxidation results in a
corresponding release of electrons which, it is believed, are
conducted by the mediator metal into, and throughout, the
existing substrate metallic layer. It is these electrons
which then serve to reduce the metal ions in solution at the
-2-2
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Last modified: November 3, 2007