Appeal No. 2005-0287 Page 8
Application No. 09/216,214
On this record, we side with appellant and do not agree with
the examiner’s alleged finding of a prima facie case of a lack of
descriptive support for appealed claim 10. This is so because
the examiner has not persuasively explained that a non-aligned
arrangement of gate sidewall silicide and source/drain regions is
taught by appellant's detailed description of the invention and
supporting drawing figures wherein it is explained and shown that
conformal gate sidewall metal, which metal is subsequently
silicided, masks a portion of the substrate from receiving the
dopant implant. Moreover, the masked portion of the substrate is
adjacent to another substrate portion receiving the implant for
forming source/drain regions of the substrate. While the
examiner acknowledges that alignment is present before
silicidation, the examiner proposes that the subsequently
silicided metal will not be in alignment.
The examiner’s supposition of non-alignment is principally
based on alleged dopant migration and the silicidation reaction.
However, that theory does not meet the examiner’s burden of
proving that alignment is not supported by the record before us.
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