Appeal No. 2001-2182 8
Application No. 08/948,895
With respect to the rejection of claim 6 there are two rejections before us. The
examiner relies upon the same references albeit in a different order, i.e., Shankar in view of
EP’656, EP’283 and GB’345 or Shankar in view of Sandhu, EP’283 and GB‘345. Each
of the references is relied upon for the same teaching of the individual elements required
by the claimed subject matter as previously discussed.
In each of the rejections before us, the motivation for combining EP’283 with
Shankar relied upon by the examiner is that, “because EP 701283 discloses that
fluorocarbon layers are better IMD materials than silicon oxide (pages 2-3), it would have
been obvious to have deposited an amorphous fluorocarbon layer on the nitrided TiN layer
of Shankar et al. rather than the oxide layer because the amorphous fluorinated carbon
would have been expected to be a better IMD material than silicon oxide.”1 See Answer,
pages 7 and 12.
In the rejection of both independent claims 1 and 6, the examiner combines
EP’283 with Shankar by adding a dielectric layer disclosed by EP’283 to a barrier layer
disclosed by Shankar. The motivational statement however does not address the issue why
one of ordinary skill in the art would have combined the two layers or where such
combination is suggested or taught by the prior art. It has not been explained why a
barrier layer should be inserted prior to the addition of an amorphous fluorinated carbon
layer. Stated otherwise, it is not explained why a barrier layer should be followed by an
1IMD is an intermetal dielectric layer.
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