Appeal No. 2003-1269
Application 09/041,913
Claims 1, 4, 6, 8 and 23-25
The appellants’ claim 1 requires “varying the temperature so
as to form said material layer to exhibit at least one
substantially uniform property comprising at least one of sheet
resistivity, reflectivity, transmissivity, absorptivity, etch
characteristics, dopant distribution, and dielectric constant.”
The examiner argues that Roy’s process enhances uniformity
of a property of the layer such as thickness, and that sheet
resistivity is a function of the layer thickness (answer, pages 4
and 8). This argument is deficient in that the examiner has not
established, by pointing to a relevant disclosure in Roy or by
another means, that Roy’s process enhances uniformity of the
layer thickness. Roy teaches that his process accommodates and
reduces the growth stress of the polysilicon layer (col. 3,
lines 6-16), but the examiner has not established that there is a
correlation between growth stress accommodation or reduction and
thickness uniformity.
The examiner, therefore, has not carried the burden of
establishing a prima facie case of obviousness over Roy in view
of Parker of the process claimed in the appellants’ claim 1.
Accordingly, we reverse the rejection over Roy in view of Parker
of this claim and claims 4, 6, 8 and 23-25 that depend therefrom.
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