Appeal No. 2003-1971
Application No. 09/489,970
thereby including the surface of said intermediately completed
gate electrode structure;
removing said unreacted cobalt from the surface of said
substrate thereby including the surface of said intermediately
completed gate electrode structure; and
removing said outer gate spacer layer from said
intermediately completed gate electrode structure, using a warm
H3PO4 based etchant, thereby creating a gate electrode structure.
References
The references relied on by the Examiner are as follows:
Tsai et al. (Tsai '024) 5,668,024 Sep. 16, 1997
Tsai et al. (Tsai '890) 5,851,890 Dec. 22, 1998
DeBoer et al. (DeBoer) 6,258,729 Jul. 10, 2001
Rejection at Issue
Claims 1, 2, 9, 12 and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being unpatentable over Tsai '890, Tsai '024 and
DeBoer '729.
OPINION
With full consideration being given to the subject matter on
appeal, the Examiner's rejection and arguments of Appellants and
Examiner, for the reasons stated infra, we affirm the Examiner's
rejection of claims 1, 2, 9, 12 and 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
At the outset, we note that Appellants state on page 11 of
the brief that claim 1 and dependent claims 2-13 form a first
group of claims. 37 CFR § 1.192 (c)(7) (July 1, 2002) as
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