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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant's election with traverse of Claims 1-12 in the reply filed on 03/23/2026 is acknowledged. No grounds of traversal was made.
The requirement is still deemed proper and is therefore made FINAL.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 03/26/2026, 09/08/2025, 10/10/2024, 05/08/2023 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claims 1-3, 7-8, 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rostoker et al. (Pub. No.: US 20030221622 A1), Rostoker in view of Gonzalez (Pub.No.: US 20190141827 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Rostoker teaches a method for generating and maintaining a field reversed configuration (FRC) plasma (paragraph [0019], “the method forms a field reversed configuration magnetic field, in which the plasma is confined”) comprising the steps of:
forming an FRC about a plasma within in a confinement chamber (FIG. 25, cahmber 310 and paragraph [0219], “When subsequently introduced into the confinement chamber 310, the resultant electric field balances the magnetic force on the beam particles” and paragraph [0020], “To produce the FRC topology within the chamber 310, it is necessary to increase the velocity of the plasma beam”).
axially injecting an electron beam from an electron beam source into the FRC plasma (Claim 1, “axially injecting plasma along the axial guide field and forming an annular plasma layer within the vessel, the plasma comprising charged particles including a plurality of electrons and a plurality of ions”, and paragraph [0124], “To solve Eqs. 10 through 12, distribution functions must be chosen that adequately describe the rotating beams of electrons and ions in a FRC”).
Rostoker does not explicitly disclose maintaining the FRC plasma at or about a constant value without decay by injecting beams of fast neutral atoms from neutral beam injectors into the FRC plasma at an angle towards the mid- plane of the confinement chamber.
Gonzalez teaches maintaining the FRC plasma at or about a constant value without decay by injecting beams of fast neutral atoms from neutral beam injectors into the FRC plasma at an angle towards the mid- plane of the confinement chamber (claim 11, “maintaining the FRC at or about a constant value without decay by injecting beams of fast neutral atoms from neutral beam injectors into the FRC plasma at an angle towards the mid-plane of the confinement chamber and injecting a compact toroid plasma into the FRC”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Rostoker in view of Gonzalez to combine the step of maintaining the FRC plasma at or about a constant value without decay by injecting beams of fast neutral atoms from neutral beam injectors into the FRC plasma at an angle towards the mid- plane of the confinement chamber with the method of Rostoker, to improve FRC confinement and provide stability control and lower construction cost (Tae, paragraph [0050]).
Regarding claim 2, Rostoker as modified above further teaches the electron beam source comprises,
an arc plasma source (Gonzalez, FIG. 7, 612 and paragraph [0061], “As shown in FIG. 7, each individual neutral beam system 610 includes an RF plasma source 612 at an input end (this is substituted with an arc source in systems 640)”),
an electron optical system comprising a system of acceleration grids (Gonzalez, paragraph [0061], “An ion optical source and acceleration grids 616 is coupled to the plasma source 612 and a gate valve 620 is positioned between the ion optical source and acceleration grids 616 and a neutralizer 622”), and
a beamline (Rostoker, paragraph [0124], “To solve Eqs. 10 through 12, distribution functions must be chosen that adequately describe the rotating beams of electrons and ions in a FRC”) including a magnetic system configured to effect electron beam formation (Rostoker, paragraph [0268], “FRC formation was successfully demonstrated utilizing the combined beam/betatron formation technique”), transport and injection into the FRC plasma (Rostoker, paragraph [0292], “At these levels, high energy ion beams can be injected into the FRC and trapped to form a plasma beam layer wherein the plasma beam ions are magnetically confined and the plasma beam electrons are electrostatically confined”).
Regarding claim 7, Rostoker as modified above further teaches the magnetic system comprises, a plasma generator coil (Rostoker, paragraph [0018], “magnetic field generator comprises a current coil”), a plasma emitter coil (paragraph [0204], “a betatron flux coil”), a lens coil, and a beam transport coil (paragraph [0204], long coil).
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rostoker and Gonzalez as applied to claim 2 above, and further in view of Kishinevsky et al. (Pub. No.: US 6664739 B1), hereafter Kishinevsky.
Regarding claim 3, combination of Rostoker and Gonzalez teaches limitations of claim 2, but does not disclose the electron beam source further comprises a beam emitter configured to effect an annular beam.
Kishinevsky teaches the electron beam source further comprises a beam emitter configured to effect an annular beam (FIG. 4, annular shaped electron emitter 40).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Rostoker and Gonzalez in view of Gonzalez to incorporate an annular beam emitter to improve operation at all pressures (column 2, lines 12-15).
Claims 8 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rostoker and Gonzalez as applied to claim 2 above, and further in view of Rogers (Pub. No.: US 20180114603 A1).
Regarding claim 8, combination of Rostoker and Gonzalez teaches limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose the axially injecting an electron beam includes, generating a plasma, expanding the plasma, extracting electrons from the plasma, and accelerating the extracted electrons.
Rogers teaches the axially injecting an electron beam includes, generating a plasma (paragraph [0135], “an electrode which selectively removed low energy electrons from the plasma”), expanding the plasma (paragraph [0058], “, extracting electrons from the plasma (paragraph [0135], “an electrode which selectively removed low energy electrons from the plasma”), and accelerating the extracted electrons (paragraph [0172], “sum of the power to activate the magnets plus the drive-power accelerating the electron beam into the core”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Rostoker and Gonzalez in view of Rogers to include the feature expand plasma and accelerating the extracted electrons to improve plasma density to increase the power balance (paragraph [0016]).
Regarding claim 12, combination of Rostoker and Gonzalez modified above further teaches the step of guiding magnetic flux surfaces of the FRC into diverters coupled to the ends of the formation sections (Tae, Claim 16, “the step of guiding magnetic flux surfaces of the FRC into diverters coupled to the ends of the first and second formation sections”).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-6, 9-11 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding claim 4, prior arts whether stand alone or in combination fail to teach or reasonably suggest the method according to Claim 3, comprising “the beam emitter includes a multi-aperture emitter grid and a mask covering apertures in a central region of the emitter grid”, as required in combination with the other limitations of the claim.
Regarding claim 5, prior arts whether stand alone or in combination fail to teach or reasonably suggest the method according to Claim 3, comprising “the beam emitter includes a multi-aperture emitter grid and a mask covering apertures in a central region of the emitter grid”, as required in combination with the other limitations of the claim.
Dependent claim 6 is also objected by virtue of its dependency.
Regarding claim 9, prior arts whether stand alone or in combination fail to teach or reasonably suggest the method according to Claim 1, comprising “wherein the second beam energy is higher than the first beam energy, or the step of tuning the beam energies of the plurality of neutral beams between a first beam energy and a second beam energy, wherein the second beam energy differs from the first beam energy, and wherein the plurality of neutral beams switch between the first and second beam energies during the duration of an injection shot”, as required in combination with the other limitations of the claim.
Regarding claim 10, prior arts whether stand alone or in combination fail to teach or reasonably suggest the method according to Claim 1, comprising “a magnetic field within the chamber with quasi-dc coils extending about the chamber and generating a mirror magnetic field within opposing ends of the chamber with quasi-dc mirror coils extending about the opposing ends of the chamber”, as required in combination with the other limitations of the claim.
Regarding claim 11, prior arts whether stand alone or in combination fail to teach or reasonably suggest the method according to Claim 1, comprising “FRC plasma includes forming first and second formation FRC plasmas in first and second formation sections coupled to opposing ends of the confinement chamber and accelerating the formation FRC plasmas toward the mid-plane of the chamber to form the FRC”, as required in combination with the other limitations of the claim.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SYED M KAISER whose telephone number is (571)272-9612. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9 a.m.-6 p.m..
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/SYED M KAISER/Examiner, Art Unit 2831 /ABDULLAH A RIYAMI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2831
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