Appeal No. 2002-0928
Application 09/315,251
examiner
has indicated in her answer that the amendment has been entered.
Accordingly, the subject matter of canceled claim 6 no longer forms
any issue in this appeal.
THE INVENTION
The appealed subject matter is directed to a method for
forming a "nanostructured" coating comprising three recited steps.
In the first step a "nanostructured" material is dispersed in a
liquid medium using ultrasound to form a solution having dispersed
therein "nanostructured" particles ranging in size from 3 to 30
nanometers (nm)2. In the second step, the dispersion obtained in
the first step is injected directly into the feed of a thermal
spray apparatus. Finally, the dispersion is sprayed onto an article
to form a "nanostructured" coating on said article. According to
appellants, their method allows reproducible deposition of high-
quality "nanostructured" coatings without an intermediate re-
processing step and allows the constituents to be mixed at a
molecular level.
We are told by appellants at page 1 of their specification at
lines 14 through 18 that:
Nanostructured materials are characterized by having a high
fraction of the material's atoms residing at grain or particle
boundaries. For example, with a grain size in the five
2 A nanometer is 10-9 meters or 1/1000 (one thousandth) of a
micron.
2
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007