DETAILED ACTION
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 .
This is a Non-Final office action based on application 18/006,569 filed January 23, 2023.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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, 3-6, 10-13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasegawa (Pre-Grant Publication 2019/0371863) in in view of Murata (Pre-Grant Publication 2017/0092876).
Regarding claim 1, Hasegawa discloses a photoelectric conversion element comprising:
a first electrode (Fig. 1, 15a);
a second electrode (18) disposed to be opposed to the first electrode; and
an organic photoelectric conversion layer (17) provided between the first electrode and the second electrode and including a first organic semiconductor material, a second organic semiconductor material, and a third organic semiconductor material (Paragraph [0063]), the second organic semiconductor material having a Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital (HOMO) level such as -6.06, which is deeper than a Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital (LUMO) level such as -4.50 of the first organic semiconductor material and has a difference of 1.0 eV or more and 2.0 eV or less from the LUMO level of the first organic semiconductor material (Paragraph [0203] Table 4 & 5), the third organic semiconductor material having a crystalline property (Paragraph [0078) and having an optical absorption edge wavelength of 550 nm or less (Table 6).
Hasegawa does not disclose the third organic semiconductor material having a linear absorption coefficient of 10000 cm-1 or less in a visible light region. However Murata discloses a photoelectric conversion device comprising:
a photoelectric conversion layer (30) wherein the photoelectric conversion layer can have a absorption coefficient of 1x104 cm-1 (10000) (Paragraph [0047]).
It would have been obvious to those having ordinary skill in the art at the time of invention to form a photoelectric layer having a absorption coefficient such as 1x104 cm-1 because it will allow the photoelectric conversion layer to be formed at a reduced thickness thereby avoiding high resistance, low mobility and/or low carrier density and increasing sensitivity and high speed response (Paragraph [0025]).
Regarding claim 3, Hasegawa further discloses:
the first organic semiconductor material comprises an electron-transporting material (Paragraph [0064]), the second organic semiconductor material comprises a dye material (Paragraph [0205]), and the third organic semiconductor material comprises a hole-transporting material (Paragraph [0074]).
Regarding claim 4, Hasegawa further discloses:
the first organic semiconductor material comprises fullerene or a derivative thereof (Paragraph [0064])
Regarding claim 5, Hasegawa further discloses:
the second organic semiconductor material comprises a donor-acceptor dye material (Paragraph [0205]).
Regarding claim 6, Hasegawa further discloses:
the second organic semiconductor material has local maximum absorption at a wavelength band of 380 nm or more and 750 nm or less (Paragraph [0068]).
Regarding claim 10, Hasegawa disclose an image device comprising:
Multiple pixels (Fig. 11, 1a;Paragraph [0150]) each provided with one or more photoelectric conversion elements including;
a first electrode (Fig. 1, 15a);
a second electrode (18) disposed to be opposed to the first electrode; and
an organic photoelectric conversion layer (17) provided between the first electrode and the second electrode and including a first organic semiconductor material, a second organic semiconductor material, and a third organic semiconductor material (Paragraph [0063]), the second organic semiconductor material having a Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital (HOMO) level such as -6.06, which is deeper than a Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital (LUMO) level such as -4.50 of the first organic semiconductor material and has a difference of 1.0 eV or more and 2.0 eV or less from the LUMO level of the first organic semiconductor material (Paragraph [0203] Table 4 & 5), the third organic semiconductor material having a crystalline property (Paragraph [0078) and having an optical absorption edge wavelength of 550 nm or less (Table 6).
Hasegawa does not disclose the third organic semiconductor material having a linear absorption coefficient of 10000 cm-1 or less in a visible light region. However Murata discloses a photoelectric conversion device comprising:
a photoelectric conversion layer (30) wherein the photoelectric conversion layer can have an absorption coefficient of 1x104 cm-1 (10000) (Paragraph [0047]).
It would have been obvious to those having ordinary skill in the art at the time of invention to form a photoelectric layer having a absorption coefficient such as 1x104 cm-1 because it will allow the photoelectric conversion layer to be formed at a reduced thickness thereby avoiding high resistance, low mobility and/or low carrier density and increasing sensitivity and high speed response (Paragraph [0025]).
Regarding claim 11, Hasegawa further discloses:
in each of the pixels, one or multiple organic photoelectric conversion sections (11g) and one or multiple inorganic photoelectric conversion sections (11b/11r) are stacked, the one or the multiple inorganic photoelectric conversion sections performing photoelectric conversion of a wavelength region (blue & red) different from the organic photoelectric conversion section (green) (Paragraph [0054]).
Regarding claim 12, Hasegawa further discloses:
the inorganic photoelectric conversion section is formed to be embedded in a semiconductor substrate, and the organic photoelectric conversion section is formed on a side of a first surface of the semiconductor substrate (Fig. 1)
Regarding claim 13, Hasegawa further discloses:
the semiconductor substrate has a second surface opposed to the first surface, and a multilayer wiring layer (51) is formed on a side of the second surface.
Claim(s) 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasegawa (Pre-Grant Publication 2019/0371863) in in view of Murata (Pre-Grant Publication 2017/0092876) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Saturo (Japanese Publication 2019/096632).
Regarding claim 2, Hasegawa and Murata disclose all of the limitations of claim 1 (addressed above). Neither explicitly disclose the first, second, and third organic semiconductor material comprises a low molecular compound having a molecular weight of 2000 or less. However Saturo discloses a photoelectric conversion device comprising:
A photoelectric conversion layer including a first, second, and third organic semiconductor layer (Fig. 5, 1/2/3) wherein the organic semiconductor layers comprise a low molecular material wherein the molecular weight can be 1500 or less (Paragraph [0051]).
It would have been obvious to those having ordinary skill in the art at the time of invention to form the layer of the photoelectric conversion layer as low molecular weight material will serve to form a photoelectric conversion device having low dark current and high sensitivity (Paragraph [0007]).
Claim(s) 7-9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasegawa (Pre-Grant Publication 2019/0371863) in in view of Murata (Pre-Grant Publication 2017/0092876) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Matsuo (Pre-Grant Publication 2019/0214417).
Regarding claims 7-9, Hasegawa and Murata disclose all of the limitations of claim 1 (addressed above). Neither explicitly disclose the first electrode includes multiple electrodes. However Matsuo discloses a photoelectric conversion device comprising:
the first electrode includes multiple electrodes independent of each other, such as a charge readout electrode (Fig. 1, 21a) and a charge accumulation electrode (21b) wherein a voltage is individually applied to the electrodes (Paragraph [0117]).
It would have been obvious to those having ordinary skill in the art at the time of invention to form the first electrode as a charge readout electrode and a charge accumulation electrode because it will serve to suppress reset noise and improve image quality (Paragraph [0117]).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BRANDON C FOX whose telephone number is (571)270-5016. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00AM-6:00PM.
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/BRANDON C FOX/Examiner, Art Unit 2818
/DAVID VU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2818