Appeal No. 2005-0285 9
Application No. 09/881,675
may be substituted for molybdenum silicide. Accordingly, the
artisan would have been led to use any of these equally obvious
choices, including a nitride, which contains nitrogen, as the
barrier metal layer, resulting in the instant claimed subject
matter.
Thus, the examiner has made a reasonable showing as to why
the artisan would have employed a nitride barrier layer (i.e., “a
layer containing nitrogen”) in the Japanese document as an
equally known alternative to the disclosed molybdenum silicide
barrier layer. The examiner has also made a reasonable showing
as to why the artisan would have been led to employ such a
barrier metal layer in Sakurai.
Accordingly, we will sustain the rejection of claims 1-3,
and 5 under 35 U.S.C. §103.
Turning to claim 4, this claim adds the limitation that the
impurity density of the interlayer insulating film is less than 5
mol %. The examiner relied on Kim for a showing of the use of
undoped silicon oxide and impurity doped silicon oxide as
dielectric materials to form interlayer insulating films in
semiconductor devices. Specifically, the examiner refers to
interlayer insulating film 108, and column 4, lines 7-12, of Kim.
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