Detailed Action
Attempts were made to reach the attorney of record, Himanshu Amin, in regards to a proposed examiner’s amendment, but they were unsuccessful.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see Page 7, final paragraph of applicant’s arguments, filed 08/19/2025, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1 and dependent claims under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) under Nemouchi(US 20230060817 A1, hereafter Nemouchi) have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Nemouchi. While the new limitations are not explicit statements given by Nemouchi, one of ordinary skill in the art would have arrived at the limitations provided by Claim 1 based on the reference provided by Nemouchi in the context of one with ordinary knowledge of the art. A new rejection is below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nemouchi.
Regarding Claim 1, Nemouchi discloses:
A superconductive device(Fig. 1,2) comprising:
A substrate(Fig. 1 [24/22/14], See paragraph 0068);
A first silicide(Fig. 1 [8]) and a second silicide(Fig. 1 [10]) located on opposite sides of a silicon channel(Fig. 1 [14]) and on top of, directly connected to, and at least partially embedded within the substrate(Fig. 1 [24/22/14]);
A first superconducting contact(Fig. 1 [40]) in contact with the first silicide(Fig. 2 [8]);
A second superconducting contact(Fig. 1 [42]) in contact with the second silicide(Fig. 1 [10]);
A dielectric(Fig. 1 [30]) located between the first(Fig. 1 [40]) and second superconducting contacts(Fig. 1 [42]) and in contact with the first silicide(Fig. 1 [8]), the second silicide(Fig. 1 [10]), and the substrate(Fig. 1 [24/22/14]); and
A gate(Fig. 1 [17]) in contact with the dielectric(Fig. 1 [30]).
Nemouchi does not explicitly disclose the substrate that comprises undoped silicon, wherein the first silicide and the second silicide are in direct contact with the undoped silicon.
However, there is also no mention of doping of the silicon within the device disclosed by Nemouchi. While Nemouchi discloses the incorporation of argon atoms into the silicon(See paragraph 0072), argon atoms are not typically considered a dopant, as they are inert. In the creation of a device as disclosed by one of ordinary skill in the art, such as the device disclosed by Nemouchi, it is not assumed that a particular substrate is doped if there is no mention of doping. Therefore, when viewing Nemouchi’s transistor in view of their disclosure and the prior art, one of ordinary skill in the art would necessarily arrive at the possibility of undoped silicon as the preferred form of silicon in formation of Nemouchi’s substrate. As the first and second silicides of Fig. 1 8 and 10 are in contact with the silicon of Fig. 1 14, it would only be natural to also arrive at the limitation wherein the first and second silicides are in contact with the undoped silicon. Producing a device along these limitations would have generated a predictable result in the direct creation of an embodiment of Nemouchi’s device in accordance with Nemouchi’s disclosure.
Regarding Claim 2, Nemouchi further discloses:
The first silicide(Fig. 1 [8]) and the second silicide(Fig. 1 [10]) have a work function that is less than 5 eV(4.6 eV, See attached NPL “Kim 2012”, Page 1 Paragraph 2).
Regarding Claim 3, Nemouchi further discloses:
The first silicide(Fig. 1 [8]) and the second silicide(Fig. 1 [10]) comprise VxSiy(See paragraph 0091).
Regarding Claim 4, Nemouchi further discloses:
The first superconducting contact(Fig. 1 [40]) and the second superconducting contact(Fig. 1 [42]) have a critical temperature Tc above 1K(See paragraph 0047, TiN with Tc 5.6 K)
Regarding Claim 6, Nemouchi further discloses:
The superconductor device(Fig. 1-2) is part of a Josephson junction(JJ)(See paragraph 0059) having a gate-tunable critical current(See paragraph 0129).
Regarding Claim 7, Nemouchi further discloses:
A width of a channel region(Fig. 1 [14]) between the first silicide region(Fig. 1 [8]) and second silicide region(Fig. 1 [10]) is 100nm or less(See paragraph 0036, between 20 nm and 100 nm).
Claim(s) 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nemouchi in view of George et al.(US 20200258984 A1, hereafter George).
Regarding Claim 5,
Nemouchi discloses a first superconducting contact(Fig. 1 [40]) and a second superconducting contact(Fig. 1 [42]) comprise titanium nitride(See paragraph 0047).
Nemouchi does not teach or disclose that the gate comprises at least one of platinum(Pt), titanium nitride(TiN), gold(Au), or Palladium(Pd).
In the same field of endeavor, George teaches a gate(Fig. 3 [110]) comprising titanium nitride(Paragraph 0040).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the application at hand was filed to modify the device disclosed by Nemouchi along the lines of George. One might have been motivated to use titanium nitride as a gate structure due to its known superconducting properties, as disclosed by George. Doing so would have generated predictable results in the creation of a device such as the one disclosed by Nemouchi but with a titanium nitride gate structure instead of a polysilicon gate structure. In addition, Nemouchi offers a suggestion that their gate structure(See paragraph 0103) may comprise a stack of metals, instead of polysilicon as explicitly disclosed by Nemouchi.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Black et al.(US 20200287119 A1, hereafter Black) discloses a first and second silicide across a silicon channel. Prolier et al.(US 20120219824 A1) discloses a superconducting niobium silicide film.
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/MARSHALL MU-NUO HATFIELD/Examiner, Art Unit 2897
/FERNANDO L TOLEDO/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2897