Appeal No. 2002-2087
Application No. 09/733,836
active regions of adjacent devices on the substrate.” Id. The
examiner finds that Lin teaches that the STI regions separate each
active region (id., citing col. 3, ll. 32-33). Therefore the
examiner finds that the STI regions of Lin separate the source and
drain diffusion regions and a portion of the source and drain wells
of device 40 from other devices or from other active regions on the
substrate. (Answer, pages 5 and 10).
The examiner recognizes that Lin does not teach forming source
and drain contact structures on the isolation regions over the
source and drain diffusion regions and extending these contact
structures through the STI to contact the source and drain
diffusion regions (Answer, page 5). Accordingly, the examiner
applies Williams for the teaching of source and drain contact
structures formed on the isolation regions and extending through
these regions to contact the source and drain diffusion regions
(Answer, page 6, citing Figure 14). From these findings, the
examiner concludes that it would have been obvious, as taught by
Williams, to form source and drain contact structures on the
isolation regions to contact the source and drain diffusion regions
in the Lin device “in order to activate the device by providing
external connections to the source and drain regions.” Id. The
examiner notes that the Lin device as depicted in Figure 6 is not a
7
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007