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 .
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 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mouli (US Publication No. 2013/0001593) in view of Anderson et al (US Patent No. 6,867,460).
Regarding claims 1 and 16, Mouli discloses a semiconductor device and a method of manufacturing, comprising: a substrate Fig 3, 16 including a principal surface; a semiconductor layer Fig 3, 18 formed as a surface layer of the substrate Fig 3, 16 or formed on the principal surface of the substrate Fig 3, 16, the semiconductor layer Fig 3, 18 having a crystal structure in which an angle between two of a plurality of crystal orientations with equivalent relationships on a crystal plane having a correspondence with the principal surface of the substrate is 60 degrees ¶0014-0019, the surface layer being the principal surface of the substrate Fig 3; an element region including a plurality of unit element regions formed on the principal surface of the substrate Fig 2. Mouli discloses all the limitations but silent on the fin arrangement.
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Whereas Anderson discloses multiple fin transistors formed in the semiconductor layer Fig 5-6, in the respective unit element regions Fig 5-6, wherein the multiple fin transistors radially extend from a center toward an outer periphery of the element region Fig 5-6, and adjacent two of the multiple fin transistors have a spacing Fig 5-6. Mouli and Anderson are analogous art because they are directed to semiconductor devices having FinFETs and one of ordinary skill in the art would have had a reasonable expectation of success to modify Mouli because they are from the same field of endeavor. Therefore it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill of the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the arrangement of Mouli and incorporate the teachings of Anderson to improve device performance (Column 5, lines 24-38). Also, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the spacing (in º angle) of the fins, since it has been held that discovering an optimum value of a result effective variable involves only routine skill in the art. In re Boesch, 617 F. 2d 272, 205 USPQ (CCPA 1980).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-15, 17-20 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.
After further search and consideration, it is determined that the prior art of record neither anticipates nor renders obvious the claimed subject matter of the instant application as a whole either taken alone or in combination, in particular, prior art of record does not teach or suggest the specific arrangement of the multiple fins’ transistor relative to the crystal orientations.
Conclusion
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/CHRISTINE A ENAD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2811