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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 01/02/26 has been entered.
Status of Claims
Applicant’s amendment and arguments, filed 01/02/26, have been fully considered. Claim(s) 1 is/are amended; claims(s) 3–8 stand(s) as originally or previously presented; and claim(s) 2 is/are canceled; no new matter is entered. Examiner affirms that the original disclosure provides adequate support for the amendment.
Upon considering said amendment and arguments, the previous claim objections and 35 U.S.C. 103 rejection set forth in the Office Action mailed 11/06/2025 has/have been maintained and altered as necessitated by Applicant’s amendment, as set forth below.
Claim Interpretation
Claims 1 and 6 each recites a “half value width”. Such will be interpreted as “the distance between two points having an intensity that is half of the maximum intensity of a peak”, as defined in ¶ 0013, and is understood as the full width at half maximum (FWHM).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text forming the basis for the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 may be found in a prior Office Action.
Claim(s) 1 and 3–8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhou et al. (WO 2021198183 A1, from 06/20/25 PTO-892, with EFD 03/20/20) (Zhou).
Regarding claims 1 and 7, Zhou discloses a battery (e.g., p. 37, lines 20–23) comprising a positive electrode (cathode, e.g., p. 37, line 20); a negative electrode (anode, e.g., p. 37, line 23); and an electrolyte layer disposed between the positive and negative electrode electrodes (iodosulfide solid electrolyte separator, e.g., p. 37, line 23), the positive electrode containing a solid electrolyte material comprising Li, Sc, and Cl (e.g., Li2Sc2/3Cl4, which is equivalent to Li3ScCl6, p. 37, line 20; see also doped exs. in fig. 3 such as Li2In0.111Sc0.555Cl4, equivalent to Li3In0.1665Sc0.8325Cl6),
wherein in an X-ray diffraction pattern of the solid electrolyte material obtained using Cu-Kα rays, there are peaks at ~ 30° and 35° 2θ, which satisfies at least two peaks in a diffraction angle 2θ range of 27° or more and 36° or less (e.g., Li2In0.111Sc0.555Cl4’s highest peak in annot. fig. 3 below); and a peak with the highest intensity within the diffraction angle 2θ range of 27° or more and 36° or less is at a diffraction angle 2θ of ~ 30° or slightly below (Id.), which appears to fall within the recited 29.51–29.85° (compare to substantially similar peak position in instant fig. 4).
Assuming, arguendo, that Zhou’s peak failed to fall within claim 1’s range, ~ 30° or slightly below is so close to the instant 29.51–29.85° that the skilled artisan would have expected the prior art’s material to perform substantially similarly to the instant material, absent demonstrated criticality (MPEP 2144.05 (I)), particularly in light of Zhou’s rendering obvious the recited solid electrolyte (see below for further explanation), as well as a substantially similar preparation method (mixing lithium-halide and transition-metal-halide precursors and heating at 300–700°C in inert atmosphere, bottom of p. 12/top of p. 13, bottom of p. 17, and/top of p. 18, and examples on p. 32, lines 13–18) compared to the instant specification (e.g., ¶ 0086; see MPEP 2112.01 (I)).
Zhou further discloses that the highest-intensity peak has a half value width of seemingly marginally greater than 0.1° (note extremely narrow half-width below (FWHM) below and compare to substantially similarly narrow peak in instant fig. 4), which appears to fall well within the recited 0.5° or less.
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As noted above, Zhou exemplarily discloses Li2In0.111Sc0.555Cl4 above but more generally discloses a compound of LiaAX4, where X is, e.g., Cl, A is M1bM2c, where M1 and M2 are different, trivalent metals, where 0.1 ≤ b ≤ 0.8, 0 ≤ c ≤ 0.7, 0.6 ≤ (b + c) ≤ 0.8, and a = 4 – 3(b + c) (end of p. 2), further disclosing that M1 and M2 are preferably selected from Sc, Al, In, and Y and that c is preferably 0.1–0.7 (p. 3, lines 19 and 20; see also formula (Ia) on p. 10, lines 16–25).
Moreover, as seen above, this compound’s stoichiometric ratios can be scaled to an X6 content, which, when substituting M1 and M2 into the formula, would yield Li1.5aM11.5bM21.5cX6. Such ratios yield a, b, and c values above that may overlap the recited 0.3 ≤ a ≤ 0.9 and 0.7 ≤ b ≤ 1.2, respectively. For example, if a were 2, M1 were Y, b were 0.111, M2 were Sc, and c were 0.555 (as in analogous Li2In0.111Sc0.555Cl4, i.e., Li3In0.1665Sc0.8325Cl6, embodied in fig. 3), such would yield Li3Y0.1665Sc0.8325Cl6 (where the skilled artisan would recognize that the Y + Sc content would equal 1 given the rounding error of 0.999 above), which would meet claim 1’s formula (1), where a = 0.8325, and b = 1.
Although Zhou fails to explicitly embody the recited formula (1) compound, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the claimed invention’s effective filing date, to routinely incorporate the recited material by routinely selecting elements and molar ratios from Zhou’s finite list of metals and ratios that fall within the recited ranges with a reasonable expectation of producing a successful solid electrolyte (MPEP 2143 (A.), 2144.07, and 2144.05 (I)).
Further, because Zhou renders obvious the recited solid electrolyte, as well as discloses a substantially similar preparation method compared to the instant specification (per above), the skilled artisan would have reasonably expected Zhou’s Y-doped Li-Sc-Cl electrolyte’s XRD peaks to still fulfill claim 1’s requirements, as in the In-doped analogue, absent evidence otherwise (MPEP 2112.01 (I)).
Regarding claims 3–5 and 8, Zhou renders obvious the solid electrolyte material according to claim 1.
Based on the above discussion, Zhou’s ratios overlap the respectively recited ranges (because, again, Zhou’s general formula renders obvious, e.g., Li3Y0.1665Sc0.8325Cl6, where a = 0.8325, and b = 1, which would satisfy claim 3’s 0.35 ≤ a ≤ 0.9, claim 4’s 0.7 ≤ a ≤ 0.9, claim 5’s 0.9 ≤ b ≤ 1.2, and claim 8’s 0.35 ≤ a ≤ 0.9 and 0.9 ≤ b ≤ 1.1) such that the skilled artisan could have routinely selected within each overlap with a reasonable expectation of forming a successful electrolyte (MPEP 2144.05 (I)).
Regarding claim 6, Zhou renders obvious the solid electrolyte material according to claim 1.
As noted above, Zhou appears to disclose a half-value width marginally above 0.1° in Li2In0.111Sc0.555Cl4/Li3In0.1665Sc0.8325Cl6, (annotated fig. 3), which, when comparing with instant fig. 4’s substantially similar peaks, seems to fall within the recited 0.15–0.42°. Again, absent evidence otherwise, based on claim 1’s discussion of Zhou’s substantially similar electrolyte and preparation method (as well as substantially similar peaks in In-doped analogues), Zhou’s peaks would reasonably satisfy the recited range.
Assuming, arguendo, that Zhou’s electrolyte narrowly failed to necessarily satisfy the recited range, the skilled artisan would recognize that, per the figure, Zhou’s value is so close to the instant 0.15–0.42° that the artisan would have expected substantially similar results from the prior art’s material as the instant material, absent demonstrated criticality (MPEP 2144.05 (I)), particularly in light of Zhou’s substantially similar material and production method (MPEP 2112.01 (I)).
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1 have been fully considered but are unpersuasive.
Applicant argues that Zhou fails to recognize that the highest-intensity peak’s being within 29.51 to 29.85° improves ion conductivity, specifically because Zhou’s Li2In0.111Sc0.555Cl4, whose highest-intensity peak is between 29° and 30°, exhibits lower ion conductivity than Li2In0.333Sc0.333Cl4 and Li2In0.444Sc0.222Cl4, whose respective highest-intensity peaks are > 30°. Although agreeing that the latter two compositions exhibit higher ion conductivity than Li2In0.111Sc0.555Cl4, Examiner respectfully disagrees that such necessarily indicates nonobviousness, particularly regarding ion conductivity.
Examiner used compositions such as Li2In0.111Sc0.555Cl4 as examples to show that, when paired with Zhou’s broader disclosure enumerating other transition-metal dopants such as Y, the skilled artisan would have reasonably expected to produce a successful solid electrolyte by substituting Y for In. Therefore, Applicant’s arguments pertaining specifically to specific compositions of the In-doped chloride appear moot.
Nonetheless, assuming, arguendo, that the Y-doped chloride would exhibit essentially identical ion conductivity as its In-doped analogue, Zhou aims to construct transition-metal-containing lithium halides with improved ion conductivity and oxidative stability versus Li/Li+ (e.g., Abstract and p. 8, lines 12–15; see also exs. in figs. 9–12).
Further, per Table 1 (p. 33), all of Zhou’s examples featuring In and Sc—analogous to the instant Y and Sc—exhibit ion conductivities at least 26% higher than Zhou’s base Li2Sc2/3Cl4/Li3ScCl6 and at least 45% higher than instant Table 1’s best examples (e.g., Zhou’s Li2In0.111Sc0.555Cl4, with the lowest conductivity at 1.89 E-3 S/cm, is 1.26x Zhou’s Li2Sc2/3Cl4 and 1.45x instant Table 1’s highest conductivity of 1.3 E-3 S/cm (Ex. 6 or 7 with Li3Y0.1S0.9Cl6 or Li3ScCl6, respectively). Moreover, it is unclear that the instant 29.51–29.85° is critical to achieving higher ion conductivity because Applicant includes no comparative examples testing below 29.51°, so it is indeterminable whether lower ion conductivity would be expected below the recited range (MPEP 716.02(d)). Rather, because Zhou demonstrates that doping is known to significantly improve ion conductivity, it is unclear that the instant results are both unexpected and superior compared to the prior art’s (MPEP 716.02(e)), and Applicant’s argument that Zhou’s Li2In0.111Sc0.555Cl4 fails to recognize improved ion conductivity is unpersuasive.
Moreover, even if the above were untrue, as discussed above, higher ion conductivity is not Zhou’s sole objective but also improved oxidation stability compared to standard electrolytes. Additionally, one skilled in the art would reasonably recognize that Y, as a rare-earth element, is extremely scarce and, thus, expensive, further understanding that trade-offs accompany almost any modification that otherwise yields certain advantages—e.g., slightly lower ion conductivity versus potentially less expensive processing (see MPEP 2143.01 (V.)). Therefore, when considering Zhou’s overall disclosure in the context of the skilled artisan’s general knowledge, Zhou’s Li2In0.111Sc0.555Cl4—or analogue with relatively small Y content and large Sc content—does not appear necessarily inferior to the similar compositions with marginally higher ion conductivities. To further corroborate this assertion, Examiner observes no criticality of record to doping with Y versus doping with In. Thus, this argument is unpersuasive.
Conclusion
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/J.S.M./Examiner, Art Unit 1751
/Haroon S. Sheikh/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1751