Appeal No. 1997-3730
Application No. 08/095,147
establishment of diode depletion regions which act as a
barrier to inhibit current flow through the buried channel
region beneath a P-channel gate. In the Examiner’s view, the
skilled artisan, noting that the conductive plugs of Lee and
the depletion regions of Harrington are made of the same
material, would have been motivated to incorporate Lee’s
conductive plugs within the outer periphery of the inactive
region of a wafer, such as illustrated in Singer, in view of
Harrington’s teachings of incorporating diodes on the surface
of a semiconductor wafer. 3
It is our view, however, that the charge transfer control
techniques of Lee and Harrington are so opposite in approach
that any motivation to combine them must have resulted from an
improper attempt to reconstruct Appellants’ invention in
hindsight. As discussed previously, Lee’s solution to the
arcing problem in plasma etch systems is to provide a
conductive path in the form of plugs to carry charge away from
the wafer. On the other hand, Harrington, rather than
3The Singer reference is relied upon by the Examiner as
disclosing the presence of inactive regions on a semiconductor
wafer surface.
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