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 claims 1-5 in the reply filed on 4/30/2026 is acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 8/19/2024. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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) 1 and 4-5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho US 2021/0126159 in view of Abayomi et al. (Application of ultrasonic sprayed zirconium oxide dielectric in zinc tin oxide-based thin film transistor, Mater. Chem. C, 2020, 8, 3730—3739).
Re claim 1, Cho teaches a photoelectric device based on quantum dots (fig10), comprising:
a substrate (230, fig10, [76]);
a zinc oxide layer (oxide semiconductor layer 210 as ZnO or SIZO a mixture of Si doped indium oxide and zinc oxide, fig10, [64, 76]) stacked on the substrate;
a quantum dots (QDs) layer (QD, fig10, [76]) stacked on the zinc oxide layer; and
a silicon oxide gate insulating layer (225, fig10, [71, 76]) stacked on the QDs layer.
Cho does not explicitly show a zirconium oxide (ZrO2) layer stacked on the QDs layer, enabling stability in atmosphere and eliminating defects caused by ligands of the quantum dots.
Abayomi teaches replacing SiO2 gate insulating layer with ZrO2 (conclusion, left col, page 3738).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Cho and Abayomi to use ZrO2 as the material of layer 225 in Cho fig10. The motivation to do so is to form a TFT with optimized performance (Abayomi, conclusion, left col, page 3738).
Cho in view of Abayomi teaches a zirconium oxide (ZrO2) layer stacked on the QDs layer, enabling stability in atmosphere and eliminating defects caused by ligands of the quantum dots. "[A]pparatus claims cover what a device is, not what a device does." Hewlett-Packard Co. v. Bausch & Lomb Inc., 909 F.2d 1464, 1469, 15 USPQ2d 1525, 1528 (Fed. Cir. 1990). A claim containing a "recitation with respect to the manner in which a claimed apparatus is intended to be employed does not differentiate the claimed apparatus from a prior art apparatus" if the prior art apparatus teaches all the structural limitations of the claim. Ex parte Masham, 2 USPQ2d 1647 (Bd. Pat. App. & Inter. 1987). Cho in view of Abayomi teaches the device with the same structure of the claimed device and manner of operating the device does not differentiate apparatus claim from the prior art.
Re claim 4, Cho in view of Abayomi teaches the photoelectric device of claim 1, wherein the zirconium oxide layer is formed by a spin coating process (Abayomi, conclusion, left col, page 3738).
Re claim 5, Cho in view of Abayomi teaches the photoelectric device of claim 1,wherein as a result of durability experiments under relative humidity conditions of 40% or less, electrical/photo reactivity properties of the photoelectric device are improved sixfold compared to a photoelectric device without the zirconium oxide layer.
"[A]pparatus claims cover what a device is, not what a device does." Hewlett-Packard Co. v. Bausch & Lomb Inc., 909 F.2d 1464, 1469, 15 USPQ2d 1525, 1528 (Fed. Cir. 1990). A claim containing a "recitation with respect to the manner in which a claimed apparatus is intended to be employed does not differentiate the claimed apparatus from a prior art apparatus" if the prior art apparatus teaches all the structural limitations of the claim. Ex parte Masham, 2 USPQ2d 1647 (Bd. Pat. App. & Inter. 1987). Cho in view of Abayomi teaches the device with the same structure of the claimed device and manner of operating the device does not differentiate apparatus claim from the prior art.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 2 and 3 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.
Specifically, the limitations are material to the inventive concept of the application in hand to form an optoelectrical device with high efficiency by using a ZrO2 channel material.
Conclusion
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/XIAOMING LIU/Examiner, Art Unit 2812
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