The Interference
The Order of the Parties
F 20. The Notice Declaring Interference accorded Leung the benefit of the filing dates of the Leung
parent, grandparent, and great grandparent applications giving Leung an effective
constructive reduction to practice date of 14 November 1994. Paper 1, p. 3.
F 21. Sandhu’s constructive reduction to practice date is the 8 November 1994 filing date of
Application 08/336,260, which issued as Sandhu’s involved patent. Patent 5,576,071, p. 1,
col. 1.
F 22. Since Sandhu had the earliest date of a constructive reduction to practice, Sandhu was
designated the senior party.
Subject Matter of the Interference
F 23. The subject matter of this interference relates to methods of decreasing the resistivity and the
amount of carbon present in thin films deposited on semiconductor wafers by chemical vapor
deposition (CVD).
F 24. The film may be a material such a titanium nitride (TiN).
F 25. The methods include placing the wafers in a reactor chamber and filling the chamber with a
vapor of an organic compound –a “precursor compound”– under conditions which will
deposit the desired film onto the wafer.
F 26. For a TiN film the organic compound may be tetrakisdialkylamido titanium (Ti(NR2)4, where
R stands for the “alkyl” moiety).
F 27. The wafer with deposited layer is then subject to a post-treatment to reduce resistivity and the
amount of carbon in the layer .
F 28. The film deposition and post-treatment steps are then repeated.
F 29. Leung’s claims specify post treating
with hydrogen gas and generating a plasma to reduce the carbon content of
said layer and thereby decrease the resistivity of the layer.
Paper 11, pp. 1-5.
F 30. Leung’s Claim 19, which is dependent upon Claim 13, is representative of the interfering
subject matter as claimed by Leung (emphasis and indentation added):
Leung 13.
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