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 .
This is the initial office action for US Patent Application No. 18/354889 by Fujimoto et al.
Claims 1-11 are currently pending and have been fully considered.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Claim Objections
Claim 9 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 9 recites “thereafter, spaying clustered gas particles to the substrate.” It appears the word spaying should instead be replaced with the word spraying.
Appropriate correction is required.
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 1-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kawakami et al. (US 2020/0233308 A1), herein referred to as Kawakami.
Regarding claims 1 and 2, Kawakami teaches ([0002, 0005 and 0022] and Claim 13) a substrate processing method (substrate treatment method) that comprises forming a metal-containing resist film on a wafer (substrate), performing a heating processing step and an exposure processing step on the resist film formed on the wafer, and subsequently performing a developing processing on the resist film formed on the wafer. Kawakami further teaches [0029] the heating processing step can include a post exposure bake step (PEB) and then after the heating processing step, Kawakami teaches [0101] the wafer is cooled on a cooling plate prior to the development step.
Regarding claim 11, Kawakami teaches the substrate processing method described above and further teaches (Claim 14) a computer-readable recording medium having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that, in response to execution, cause an apparatus to perform the aforementioned substrate processing method.
With further regard to claims 2 and 11, Kawakami teaches [0102] heat treating (applying thermal energy) the resist film formed on the wafer after the development step.
Kawakami does not appear to explicitly recite the limitations of claims 1, 2 and 11 directed to “suppressing the precursor formation of a film of the metal-containing resist formed on a substrate on which exposure and a PEB treatment have been performed; and subsequent thereto, improving selectivity of the film by the condensation reaction in the film before the forming the pattern.
However, at the time of the filing date of the instant application, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to apply a known technique, such as the substrate processing method taught by Kawakami with the specified cooling step, to reasonably expect improved suppression of precursor formation in the resist film and improved selectivity of the resist film because lowering the temperature of the resist covered wafer would inhibit chemical reactions such as condensation/dehydration reactions within the resist film. Furthermore, by applying the known methods steps of Kawakami, one of ordinary skill in the art would be able to improve resist film stability on a semiconductor wafer, thereby achieving predictable results (MPEP Chapter 2143, Section I, Part D titled “Applying a Known Technique to a Known Device (Method, or Product) Ready for Improvement To Yield Predictable Results”)
Regarding claim 3, Kawakami teaches [0101] the cooling step is performed without an intervening treatment step.
Regarding claim 4, Kawakami teaches [0102] heat treating (applying thermal energy) the resist film to improve the pattern forming ability of the resist film.
Regarding claims 5-7, although Kawakami does not explicitly teach performing development at least twice on the resist covered wafer or performing PEB processes at least twice. However, in view of Kawakami, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to performing multiple development processes and PEB processes on a resist covered wafer with a reasonable expectation of success because such processes are known to one of ordinary skill in the art and are conventionally performed to process resist covered wafers.
Regarding claims 8 and 9, although Kawakami does not explicitly teach the development step being in wet mode or dry mode, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to employ dry (gaseous) development or wet (liquid) development with a reasonable expectation of success because such development processes are known to one of ordinary skill in the art and are conventionally performed to process resist covered wafers.
Regarding claim 10, although Kawakami does not explicitly teach the time of the cooling step (suppressing the precursor formation and improving selectivity), it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to maintain a constant time during the cooling step for each wafer with a reasonable expectation of success and to ensure the resist covered wafers are processed uniformly to the correct manufacturing specifications.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to STEWART A FRASER whose telephone number is (571)270-5126. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, 7am-4pm, EST.
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/STEWART A FRASER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1724