Appeal No. 2001-2203
Application No. 09/007,949
added, in the alternative, to the combination of Lee and Wilson.
Claims 10-13 and 19-26 include details of a planarization procedure
in which the first deposited metal layer and the insulation layer
are planarized to the same plane followed by deposition of a second
metal layer. To address the recognized deficiencies of the
proposed combination of Lee and Wilson in disclosing the claimed
planarization features, the Examiner turns to Yu and Mathews. Our
review of Yu and Mathews, however, reveals that, at best, they
disclose the beneficial aspects of providing planarized plugs that
have improved surface contact areas. Given this limited teaching
value of Yu and Mathews, we fail to see why the skilled would have
been motivated to modify the Examiner’s proposed combination of Lee
and Wilson with Yu or Mathews since Lee, in each of the disclosed
embodiments, already provides a planarized metal layer. For
example, in Lee’s Figure 13 embodiment, a deposited metal layer 38
is heat treated to form a planarized layer 39 as illustrated in
Figure 15. Similar heat treatment to form planarization layers 59,
79, 99, and 119 in other embodiments in Lee are also described.
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