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 .
Claims 1-13 and 15-20 are currently pending in the present application.
Claims 1-10 and 17-20 are withdrawn; claim 11 is currently amended; claims 12-13 and 16 are original; and claim 15 has been previously presented.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 09 March 2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant argues that none of the references of record disclose the newly added claim limitation in independent claim 11 that a width of a first nanostructure is less than a width of a second nanostructure, the array of phase-modulating nanostructures comprising the first nanostructure and the second nanostructure. As set forth in the new rejections below, prior art reference of record Wang ‘430 discloses the newly added claim limitation.
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) 11-13 and 15-16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yao (US 2021/0190593), of record, in view of Wang ‘008 (US 2007/0217008), of record, and Wang ‘430 (US 20200344430), of record.
Re: claim 11, Yao discloses a substrate (Figs. 1A, 2A & para. 50 disclose dielectric spacer layer comprised of SiO2) and an array of phase-modulating nanostructures (Figs. 1A, 2A & para. 48) formed on the substrate (Figs. 1A, 2A), at least one phase-modulating nanostructure of the array of phase-modulating nanostructures changing a phase of incident light a predetermined amount based on a first width and a second width of the phase-modulating nanostructure (structure & capability disclosed in at least Figs. 1A, 2A & para. 48 “One way metasurfaces accomplish polarization effects is through metasurface geometrically induced birefringence…, FIG. 1(a) [which] illustrates a unit-cell quarter-wave plate…”) the first width being perpendicular to the second width (Figs. 1A, 2A & para. 48), and the phase-modulating nanostructure being formed from a material having a refractive index that is greater than 1.9 (para. 48 discloses that the nanostructures are comprised of silicon, which has a refractive index greater than 1.9).
While the embodiments of Yao in Figures 1 and 2 do not explicitly disclose that the nanostructures are formed in a grid pattern, the embodiment of Yao in Figure 11 makes such disclosure (see also para. 73).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at a time before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have the embodiment of Figure 11 of Yao applied to the embodiment of Figures 1 and 2 of Yao for the purpose of the device having the ability to detect linear polarized light (see para. 73 of Yao “This concept of an integrated, on-chip polarization detector can be expanded to include not only L and R hand CPL detectors, but also linear polarization detectors.”)
Yao does not explicitly disclose that centers of the nanostructures are positioned a half-wavelength from each other, that the filter focuses light incident on the filter towards a center of a pixel of an image sensor at an image plane based on the nanostructures having spatially varying dimensions across the array according to a phase map, and that a width of a first nanostructure is less than a width of a second nanostructure, the array of phase-modulating nanostructures comprising the first nanostructure and the second nanostructure.
Wang ‘008 discloses that centers of the nanostructures 120 are positioned a half-wavelength from each other (para. 56; Figs. 1A, 1B).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at a time before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have centers of the nanostructures are positioned a half-wavelength from each other, as disclosed by Wang ‘008, and applied to the device disclosed by Yao for the purpose of improving the extinction ratio of the polarizer.
Wang ‘430 discloses that the filter 43, 73, 83 (Figs. 4a, 4b, 7, 8a, 8b) focuses light incident on the filter towards a center of a pixel CFA, MLA of an image sensor PD at an image plane based on the nanostructures 43-1, 43-2, 73-2, 73-3, 73-4, 83-1, 83-3, 83-4 having spatially varying dimensions across the array according to a phase map (spatial variation in dimensions including width disclosed in Figs. 4a, 4b, 7, 8a, 8b) and that a width of a first nanostructure 83-4 (Figs. 8a, 8b) is less than a width of a second nanostructure 83-3 (less than disclosed in Figs. 8a, 8b, where figures can be relied upon for what they would reasonably teach one of ordinary skill in the art MPEP § 2125. See also para. 49 “the metamaterial structures…have different geometries such as the periodicity and size of the features”), the array of phase-modulating nanostructures 83-1 – 83-4 comprising the first nanostructure and the second nanostructure.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at a time before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have the filter focus light incident on the filter towards a center of a pixel of an image sensor at an image plane based on the nanostructures having spatially varying dimensions across the array according to a phase map, where a width of a first nanostructure is less than a width of a second nanostructure, the array of phase-modulating nanostructures comprising the first nanostructure and the second nanostructure, as disclosed in Wang ‘430, as applied to the device disclosed by Yao for the purposes of implementing a broadband transmission filter capable of handling large differences in light transmittance of incident light and to extend the dynamic range of the image sensor (see paras. 25 & 49 Wang ‘430).
Re: claim 12, Yao, Wang ‘008 and Wang ‘430 disclose the limitations of claim 11, and Yao further discloses that the phase-modulating nanostructure inelastically scatters light incident on the filter (capability disclosed in at least Figs. 1A, 2A, where real-world polarizers inherently scatter light inelastically in addition to transmitting and reflecting light elastically).
Re: claim 13, Yao, Wang ‘008 and Wang ‘430 disclose the limitations of claim 12, and Yao further discloses that a field of view of the filter is at least 30 degrees for a normalized intensity of 1 (capability disclosed in at least Figs. 1A, 2A & para. 48, where when the general conditions of a claim are disclosed in the prior art, it is not inventive to discover the optimum or workable ranges by routine experimentation [MPEP § 2144.05]).
Re: claim 15, Yao, Wang ‘008 and Wang ‘430 disclose the limitations of claim 11, and Yao further discloses that the phase-modulating nanostructure (Figs. 1A, 2A & para. 48) is formed from at least one of silicon, silicon nitride (Si3N4), titanium dioxide (TiO2), gallium nitride (GaN), Zinc oxide (ZnO), hafnium silicate, zirconium silicate, hafnium dioxide or zirconium dioxide (para. 48 discloses that the nanostructures are comprised of silicon).
Re: claim 16, Yao, Wang ‘008 and Wang ‘430 disclose the limitations of claim 11, and Yao further discloses that the filter comprises a quarter-wave plate (para. 48).
Conclusion
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/ANGELA M. MEDICH/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2871