Appeal No. 1998-2948
Application 08/400,861
Hochido, Yamamoto, Joshi, and Lee disclose an aluminum/rare
earth metal alloy, with the rare earth element in the claimed
proportion, for use as an interconnection conductor in
integrated circuits, including as electrodes for thin film
transistors in LCDs (Yamamoto), but do not discuss anodic
oxidizing the interconnect/electrode film.
Hochido and Lee disclose an aluminum/rare earth element
alloy having beneficial properties, especially reduction of
undesirable hillock formation, for use as an interconnection
conductor in integrated circuits. While it can be reasoned
that one of ordinary skill in the art would have been
motivated to substitute the aluminum/rare earth element alloy
of Hochido or Lee for the aluminum alloy in Kiyota to achieve
the stated benefits, there is more specific motivation found
in Joshi and Yamamoto. Joshi discloses that addition of
elements with low solubility is an approach to achieve
metallization with improved characteristics without
deterioration in electrical conductivity, as compared to prior
art alloys such as Al-Cu, and that rare earth elements have
relatively low solubilities in aluminum, so an aluminum/rare
earth element alloy would provide improvement over the prior
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