Appeal No. 2005-1011 Page 5
Application No. 09/921,588
With this as background, we analyze the prior art applied by the examiner in the
rejection of the independent claims on appeal.
Kimura
Kimura 's invention relates in general to a polishing apparatus, and more
particularly to a polishing apparatus for producing a flat mirror polished surface on an
object such as a semiconductor wafer. The object of Kimura's invention was to provide
a polishing apparatus which can produce uniform polishing action across the polished
surface of an object such as a semiconductor wafer so as to achieve a uniformly flat
and mirror polished finish on the object. Kimura teaches that such object is achieved
according to his invention by providing a polishing apparatus for polishing a surface of
an object and including a turntable having a polishing cloth mounted on an upper
surface thereof, a top ring for holding and pressing the object against the polishing
cloth, and a plurality of radially arranged nozzles for supplying a polishing solution,
containing abrasive material, of different concentrations differing along a radial direction
of the polishing cloth.
According to a first embodiment of Kimura (see Figures 1-2), polishing solutions
of different concentrations are supplied through the radially arranged nozzles disposed
above the polishing cloth. Therefore, the apparatus allows fine tuning of the rate of
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