Appeal 2006-2444
Application 10/342,053
According to Appellants, the invention is directed to a method of
forming a two-phase mixture of supercritical carbon dioxide and liquid co-
solvent by using an amount of the co-solvent that exceeds the solubility of
said co-solvent in the supercritical carbon dioxide, and subsequently
applying this two-phase mixture to remove unwanted material from a
semiconductor substrate (Br. 7). Claim 1 is illustrative of the invention and
is reproduced below:
1. A method comprising:
forming a two-phase mixture of supercritical carbon dioxide
and liquid co-solvent using an amount of co-solvent that exceeds the
solubility of said co-solvent in supercritical carbon dioxide; and
applying said two-phase mixture to remove unwanted material
from a semiconductor substrate.
The Examiner has relied upon the following references as evidence of
obviousness:
Subramaniam US 5,874,029 Feb. 23, 1999
McClain US 6,030,663 Feb. 29, 2000
Schilling US 2004/0112409 Jun. 17, 2004
Claims 1, 3, and 8-16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Schilling as “evidenced by” McClain (Answer 2).1
Claims 2, 17, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Schilling as evidenced by McClain, further in view of Subramaniam
(Answer 4).
1 We note that this rejection includes claims 9-10 which were previously
cancelled (Br. 5). In our review of this rejection, we consider only pending
claims 1, 3, 8. and 11-16.
2
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