Appeal No. 1996-2086
Application 08/255,588
(d) cooling said substrate and gettering material to solidify said droplets; and
(d) [sic, (e)] then removing said gettering material from said surface.
The references relied upon by the examiner are:
Fuller 2,784,121 March 5, 1957
Schaake et al. (Schaake) 4,504,334 March 12, 1985
The claims stand rejected as follows:
Claims 1 and 8 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102 (b) as being anticipated
by Fuller.
Claims 1 through 11 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable
over Fuller, the admitted prior art, and Schaake.
We reverse both rejections and remand the application to the examiner.
The appellant’s invention is related “to photodetectors based on narrow bandgap
semiconductor materials and the processing of such materials” by removing fast diffusing
impurities such as copper. Specification, p. 1. As is apparent from the claims, the
appellant’s method of “gettering” impurities from a solid substrate involves heating the
substrate with a gettering material on its surface to a temperature (i) greater than the
melting point of the gettering material (claim 1) or (ii) within 150EC of the melting point of
the gettering material (claim 8), cooling the substrate and gettering material and then
removing the gettering material. Alternatively, the appellant’s method involves providing
the substrate in a fluid communication with a reservoir of gettering material and heating the
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