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 Objections
Claims 11 and 16 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 11, states “temperature zone regions”, but claim 10 states “temperature control regions”; and
Claim 16, limitation 2, change “a moving average processor configured to calculate …” to “a processor configured to calculate …”.
Appropriate corrections are required.
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.
Claims 1, 8-9, 12 and 15-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nosrati, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2017/0229331 (‘331), in view of DeWard, EP 0879547 (‘547).
As per claim 1, ‘331 discloses a controlling a temperature of a substrate by using temperature values detected by temperature sensors installed to be rotatable together with a holder configured to hold the substrate (e.g., See ‘331, [0015] – [0017] and [0024] – [0025]).
However, ‘331 does not disclose using a moving average value calculated by performing a moving average process on the detected temperature values.
‘547 discloses this feature by disclosing a model predictive temperature controller using an auto-regressive moving average-based model, in which current and past temperature outputs are processed to predict future temperatures and generate control values for temperature control (e.g., See ‘547; [0024], [0028] – [0031], [0044] – [0045] and [0059]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to have incorporated the teachings of ‘547 into ‘331 for the purpose of smoothing or stabilizing temperature feedback before heater control, thereby improving temperature control stability and reducing overshoot.
As per claim 8, ‘331’s combined system (‘331 in view of ‘547) further discloses that the temperature sensor includes a temperature measurement portion arranged inside a peripheral portion of the substrate (e.g., See ‘547; [0017], which discloses thermocouples at front, side, and rear wafter locations, wherein the front, side, and rear thermocouple locations are interpreted to correspond to the claimed “temperature measurement portions arranged inside a peripheral portion of the substrate”).
As per claim 9, ‘331’s combined system further discloses that the holder includes a holding member configured to hold the substrate, and that the temperature sensor includes a temperature measurement portion arranged in a vicinity of the holding member (e.g., See ‘331; [0015] and [0024], which discloses that a wafer support assembly includes a wafer support portion configured to hold a wafer, wherein temperature sensors are integrated in the wafer support portion).
As per claim 12, ‘331’s combined system discloses suppressing the influence of fluctuations of detected temperature values on controlling the temperature (e.g., See ‘547; [0024], [0028] – [0031] and [0059], which discloses an auto regressive moving average based predictive control model that minimizes overshoot and improves recovery time).
As per claim 15, ‘331’s combined system discloses manufacturing a semiconductor device by controlling substrate temperature during semiconductor substrate processing (e.g., See ‘331; [0015] [0016] and [0024], which discloses a semiconductor processing apparatus with a heated wafer support and temperature control; also See ‘547; [0019], which discloses processing a substrate in a reactor during a process cycle while controlling the thermal processing sequence).
As per claims 16 and 17, ‘331’s combined system discloses a temperature control system and substrate processing apparatus that includes a holder, temperature sensor, and controller for controlling a temperature of a substrate (e.g., See ‘331; [0015] – [0017] and [0024] – [0025]), wherein a moving average control feature is addressed with respect to the rejection of claim 1, which is incorporated herein.
As per claim 18, ‘547 discloses a processor and a data storage device providing hardware and/or software implementation of the model predictive control technique, the storage device is interpreted to correspond to a non-transitory computer readable recording medium storing a program for performing the temperature control process or steps (e.g., See ‘547; [0044] – [0045]), wherein the method steps are addressed with respect to the rejection of claim 1, which is incorporated herein.
Claims 2, 5 and 10-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nosrati, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2017/0229331 (‘331), in view of DeWard, EP 0879547 B1 (‘547), as applied to claim 1, from above, and further in view of KANEKO, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2018/0350569 (‘569).
As per claim 2, ‘331’s combined system does not specifically disclose a process recipe that includes a plurality of executable steps, wherein the moving average value is determined by a moving average parameter for each of the steps.
‘569 discloses these features by disclosing that a main control unit executes a control program and controls respective parts of the plasma processing apparatus based on recipe data stored in a storage device (e.g., See ‘569; [0050]), and further discloses multiple plasma processing steps and obtaining moving average values from time series measured temperature data during feedback control (e.g., See ‘569; [0085] – [0087]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to have incorporated the teachings of ‘569 into ‘331’s combined system for the purpose of setting the moving average-based temperature control for different recipe steps, thereby improving temperature control adaptability for multi-step processing.
As per claim 5, ‘331 in view of ‘547, in further view of ‘569 further discloses that a control parameter of a heating part is set to correspond to the moving average parameter (e.g., See ‘569; [0085] – [0087], which discloses performing feedback control using errors between target temperatures and moving average value of measured temperatures, and adjusting heater control based on those errors).
As per claim 10, ‘331 in view of ‘547, in further view of ‘569 further discloses that a plurality of temperature control regions is provided, and the moving average parameter is capable of being set for each of the temperature control regions (e.g., See ‘547; [0058] – [0060] and [0079], which discloses a plurality of temperature control zones and corresponding temperature sensors configured to measure temperatures of the zones).
As per claim 11, ‘331 in view of ‘547, in further view of ‘569 further discloses that a plurality of temperature zone regions is provided, and the moving average parameter is capable of being set for each of the temperature zone regions (e.g., See ‘547; [0085] – [0087], which discloses performing feedback control for a plurality of temperature control zones using errors between target temperatures of the zones and moving average values of measured temperatures of the zones).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-4, 6-7 and 13-14 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.
As per claim 3, the prior art of record fails to teach or adequately suggest the claimed combination of features; specifically, the prior art uses temperature feedback and recipe-based control, but does not set the moving average parameter based on a holder rotational speed that is arbitrarily set for each recipe step, in combination with the other claimed features and or limitations as claimed.
As per claim 4, the prior art of record fails to teach or adequately suggest the claimed combination of features; specifically, the prior art does not teach setting the moving average parameter based on rotational speed information including a predetermined rotational speed of the holder, in combination with the other claimed features and or limitations as claimed.
As per claim 6, the prior art of record fails to teach or adequately suggest the claimed combination of features; specifically, the prior art does not clearly disclose switching the control calculation between using moving average temperature values in one step and using raw detected temperature values in another step where the moving average parameter is not set, in combination with the other claimed features and or limitations as claimed.
As per claim 13, the prior art of record fails to teach or adequately suggest the claimed combination of features; specifically, the prior art discloses controlling temperature towards target recipe temperatures, but does not clearly disclose setting the temperature values detected by the rotatable sensor equal to the processing temperature set for a substrate processing step, in combination with the other claimed features and or limitations as claimed.
References Considered but Not Relied Upon
The following references were considered but were not relied upon with respect to any prior art rejections:
(1) US 6,169,271 B2, which discloses model based wafer temperature control using measured chamber surface temperature to adjust heater output;
(2) US 9,798,308 B2, which discloses a semiconductor wafer temperature controller that uses multiple temperature adjusters and setpoints to improve overall wafer uniformity;
(3) US 11,823,873 B2, which discloses a substrate carrier with a thermometer used to measure susceptor temperature and adjust susceptor temperature control accordingly;
(4) US 8,404,572 B2, which discloses multi zone temperature control using separate temperature zones in a platen or electrostatic chuck; and
(5) US 2014/0069130 A1, which discloses a semiconductor chamber temperature controller using chamber and pedestal temperature as control parameters used to regulate thermal energy.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RONALD D HARTMAN JR whose telephone number is (571)272-3684. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:30 - 4:30 EST.
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/RONALD D HARTMAN JR/Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2119 May 30, 2026; /RDH/
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