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 without traverse of Group I, claims 1-8 in the reply filed on June 30th, 2026 is acknowledged.
Claims 9-12 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected invention, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on June 30th, 2026.
Claim Interpretation
Claim 3 recites the limitation, “T is a functional group of F, O or OH, and x is a real number greater than 0” (emphasis added) in reference to the chemical formula M3C2Tx. As recited, the claim requires T in Tx to be exactly one of F, O, or H.
Claim Objections
Claim 4 is objected to because of the following informalities:
In line 2 of claim 4, “are” should be replaced with “is”.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-2 and 4-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Nguyen (“Interfacial strain-modulated nanospherical Ni2P by heteronuclei-mediated growth on Ti3C-2Tx MXene for efficient hydrogen evolution”, 2022).
Regarding claim 1, Nguyen teaches an electrochemical catalyst composite (Nguyen, Page 2, Col. 1, Paragraph 2 - Col. 2, Paragraph 1, Ni2P@Ti3C2Tx MXene hybrid catalyst) comprising:
a two-dimensional MXene support with surface defects (Nguyen, Page 2, Col. 2, Paragraph 2, Ti3C2Tx); and
metal phosphide nanoparticles located at a surface defect site (Nguyen, Page 4, Col. 1, “We concluded that the defects on the surface of the Ti3C2Tx MXene serve as nucleation sites that allow the formation of a Ni2P nanostructure”) of the two-dimensional MXene support and having controlled crystal strain (Nguyen, Page 5, Col. 1, Paragraph 2, strain modulated via growth time).
Regarding claim 2, Nguyen teaches the electrochemical catalyst composite of claim 1, as discussed above, wherein the two- dimensional MXene support with the surface defects and the metal phosphide nanoparticles are heterogeneously bonded (Nguyen, Page 2, Col. 1, Paragraph 3, chemically anchored Ni2P NSs on surface defect-engineered Ti3C2T-x MXene; Page 4, Col. 2, Paragraph 2, bonding between Ni2P nanospheres and Ti3C2Tx MXene sheets).
Regarding claim 4, Nguyen teaches the electrochemical catalyst composite of claim 1, as discussed above, wherein the two-dimensional MXene support is subjected to an ultrasonic dispersion process in an acidic solution and an organic solution to have the surface defects (Nguyen, Page 10, Col. 2, Paragraph 2).
Regarding claim 5, Nguyen teaches the electrochemical catalyst composite of claim 1, as discussed above, wherein the petal phosphide comprises nickel phosphide (Nguyen, Page 11, Col. 1, Paragraph 1, Ni2P).
Regarding claim 6, Nguyen teaches the electrochemical catalyst composite of claim 1, as discussed above, wherein the metal phosphide is contained by 30wt% relative to a total weight of the electrochemical composite (Nguyen, Page 8, Col. 1, Paragraph 2).
Regarding claim 7, Nguyen teaches the electrochemical catalyst composite of claim 1, as discussed above, wherein electric charges are transferred from the metal phosphide nanoparticles to the MXene support through a chemical bond between the MXene support and the metal phosphide nanoparticles, and an electronic structure is changed through charge rearrangement to increase a metal-phosphorus bond and positively shift a bonding peak on X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) (Nguyen, Fig. 3a, Page 5, Col. 2, Paragraph 1, “Obviously, the peak for Niδ+ in Ni2P@Ti3C2Tx are positively shifted compared with the corresponding peaks
in MXene-free Ni2P, which confirms the chemical binding between Ni2P NPs and Ti3C2Tx MXene and indicates charge transfer from Ni2P to Ti3C2Tx MXene layer.”).
Regarding claim 8, Nguyen teaches the electrochemical catalyst composite of claim 1, as discussed above, wherein electric charges are transferred from the metal phosphide nanoparticles to the MXene support through a chemical bond between the MXene support and the metal phosphide nanoparticles, and an electronic structure is changed through charge rearrangement to negatively shift a peak corresponding to Ti (I) on X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) (Nguyen, Fig. 3b, Page 5, Col. 2, Paragraph 1, “Furthermore, the Ti peaks represented negative shift which is consistent with the charge transfer as mentioned above.”).
Potential Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 3 is 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: Nguyen (“Interfacial strain-modulated nanospherical Ni2P by heteronuclei-mediated growth on Ti3C-2Tx MXene for efficient hydrogen evolution”, 2022), Wang (CN 110589786 A, 2019) (the translation provided with the attached original document is referenced below), and Lv (“Synergistic effect of Ni2P and MXene enhances catalytic activity in the hydrogen evolution reaction”, 2021) are considered to be the closest prior art to the instant claims.
Regarding claim 3, Nguyen teaches the electrochemical catalyst composite of claim 1, as discussed above, wherein the two-dimensional MXene support with the surface defects comprises metal carbide MXenes represented by the chemical formula Ti3C2Tx, where T is F, O, and H (Nguyen, Page 2, Col. 1, Paragraph 2, “Ti3C2Tx MXene functionalized with various hydrophilic groups (—F, —O, and —OH)” and Col. 2, Paragraph 2). Neither Nguyen nor the other cited prior art references teach or suggest that T is a ligand of F, O, or H. While Lv teaches that forming a Ti3C2Tx/Ni-2P composite may replace —F with —O/—OH during hydrothermal treatment (Lv, Page 1606, Col. 2, Paragraph 3), there is no teaching or suggestion of only a single ligand being present on a MXene as claimed. The claimed chemical formula 1 of M3C2Tx, where T is a functional group of F, O, or H, requires exactly one of F, O, or OH.
Conclusion
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/ZACHARY JOHN BAUM/Examiner, Art Unit 1736
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