Appeal No. 2006-1107
Application No. 09/382,442
Appellant responds that Lisenker fails to support the
examiner’s position that hydrogen is unintentionally introduced
into the silicon oxide layer. Appellant also responds that the
applied prior art does not suggest the use of deuterium in a
FLASH memory (reply brief, pages 1-3).
We will not sustain the examiner’s rejection of claims 1,
2, 4, 5 and 7-10 for essentially the reasons argued by appellant
in the briefs. Lisenker teaches that a deuterium atmosphere has
advantages over a hydrogen atmosphere in many fabrication
processes. The examiner uses this teaching to replace the
“unintentional” hydrogen in the dry oxygen atmosphere of
Nakanishi with a deuterium atmosphere. We fail to see why an
artisan would have been motivated to use a deuterium atmosphere
in a situation where the presence of hydrogen was not desired in
the first place. In other words, there is no reason for an
artisan to seek to improve upon the properties of hydrogen when
there is not supposed to be any hydrogen in the environment.
Even if there is unintended hydrogen, there would be no
motivation to improve or enhance the properties of this
unintended hydrogen. We agree with appellant that the
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