DETAILED ACTION
Election
Applicant’s election without traverse of Species A in the reply filed on January 28, 2026, is acknowledged. Claims 7-9 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected species, there being no allowable generic or linking claim.
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 of this title, 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.
Claims 1-4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Daigo et al., US 2020/0190692, in view of Kashiwagi, JP 5-238882, wherein machine translation is provided, and Mabuchi et al., US 2021/0202294.
Claim 1: Daigo discloses a vapor phase growth apparatus, comprising:
A reactor (10) (Fig. 1);
A holder (14) provided in the reactor to place a substrate (W) thereon;
A first heater (22) provided in the reactor and located below the holder [0031];
A second heater (42) provided in the reactor and located above the holder [0031];
Wherein the holder includes:
An inner region (d3) (Fig. 3);
An annular outer region (14a) surrounding the inner region.
Daigo’s holder does not comprise a “support portion…having an annular shape,” as claim 1 requires. In supplementation, Kashiwagi discloses a susceptor adapted for a vapor phase growth system comprising an annular support portion (2), disposed within an inner region (1), capable of supporting a bottom surface of a substrate (W) ([0010]; Fig. 1). Kashiwagi further attests that the diameter of the support portion is 95 percent of the inner diameter of the outer region (10), whereby the inner diameter of the outer region is equal to the wafer’s outer diameter plus 2 mm. For a standard 5-inch wafer, this would yield an inner diameter of 129 mm and a support portion diameter of 122.55 mm. Thus, Kashiwagi discloses a distance between an outer peripheral edge of the support portion and an inner peripheral edge of the outer region of 6.45 mm, which the examiner understands to render obvious the claimed threshold of 6 mm. It would have been obvious to configure the inner region of Daigo’s support in accordance with Kashiwagi’s paradigm since the use of known technique, e.g., bearing a wafer on an annular support portion, to improve a similar device in the same way is within the scope of ordinary skill.
Regarding the requirement of a support portion width of at least 3 mm, Kashiwagi merely provides a lower bound of 0.5 mm, but alternative standards are known. Mabuchi, for instance, bears a wafer with support portions (4) having a width between 1-5 mm, thereby demonstrating the viability of widening the portion beyond the claimed threshold of 3 mm ([0011]; Fig. 3). It would have been obvious to widen the support portion to at least 3 mm since choosing an identified solution with a reasonable expectation of success is within the scope of ordinary skill.
Lastly, claim 1 concludes with three expressions each involving terms R1 and R2, which signify substrate radius and film deposition radius, respectively. The examiner observes that the first term invokes the article worked upon by the apparatus, which is not patentable subject matter: expressions relating the apparatus to contents thereof during an intended operation are of no significance in determining the patentability of the apparatus (Ex parte Thibault, 164 USPQ 666, 667 (Bd. App. 1969)). The operator can simply procure a substrate of any radius necessary to satisfy the recited expressions.
The second term invokes the act of intended use, whereby the prior art must simply demonstrate the structural capacity to reproduce the claimed function in order to satisfy the threshold for rejection – it has been held that a recitation drawn to the intended manner of employing a claimed apparatus does not differentiate said apparatus from a prior art apparatus satisfying the claimed structural limitations (Ex parte Masham, 2 USPQ2d 1647 (1987)). Similar to R1, the operator can regulate the deposition profile of R2 to satisfy the recited expressions.
Claim 2: Daigo contemplates an embodiment in which the holder (14) is formed of carbon coated with silicon carbide [0050]. Arbitrarily, a portion of the outer region comprising carbon can be designated as the “first member” and a portion comprising SiC can be designated as the “second member.”
Claim 3: With reference to the rejection of claim 2, above, the “first member” can be taken from the bottommost portion of the holder and the “second member” can be taken from an uppermost portion, where the claimed “boundary” can be arbitrarily drawn anywhere in between, including at a location below the substrate’s top surface.
Claim 4: Assuming that the SiC coating is being taken as the “second member,” the latter is formed of SiC, by definition.
Claims 5 and 6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Daigo in view of Kashiwagi and Mabuchi, and in further view of Sakai et al., US 2021/0010158.
Daigo does not disclose the claimed features of inner and outer periphery fixing portions. Sakai, then, is cited to remedy the deficiency. A shown by Figure 4, Sakai embeds a removable annular second member (8) within the outer region of a carbon substrate support (2), whereby the second member may be formed of silicon carbide [0029, 0043]. As shown by the profile view of Figure 1, the second member is bounded on both the inner and outer sides by the carbon portion of the outer region, whereby these inner and outer sides may be taken as the claimed “inner periphery fixing portion” and “outer periphery fixing portion,” respectively. Sakai provides the second member to decrease the reactivity of the growth gas at the holder’s periphery, thereby stabilizing growth characteristics on the wafer itself and increasing yield [0040]. As Daigo shares this same desideratum, it would have been obvious to embed a SiC member within the outer region of the holder.
Conclusion
The following prior art is made of record as being pertinent to Applicant’s disclosure, yet is not formally relied upon: Chen et al., US 2020/0161100. Chen discloses a vapor phase growth apparatus in which a holder (150) is disposed, said holder comprising an annular support portion (154a) and an annular outer region (156) surrounding the inner region ([0034; Fig. 2).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NATHAN K FORD whose telephone number is (571)270-1880. The examiner can normally be reached on 11-7:30 PM. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Parviz Hassanzadeh, can be reached at 571 272 1435. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571 273 8300.
/N. K. F./
Examiner, Art Unit 1716
/KARLA A MOORE/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1716