DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 1-20 are pending.
The copy of the foreign priority application No.2021-132049 filed on August 13, 2021 has not been made of record in the instant application.
Specification
The abstract of the disclosure is objected to because it exceeds 150 words. A corrected abstract of the disclosure is required and must be presented on a separate sheet, apart from any other text. See MPEP § 608.01(b).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 102 that forms 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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Ou et al. (WO 2020/105505, with citations from the English equivalent US 2021/0271162).
With regard to claims 1, 4, 7, and 10, Ou et al. teach a method for inspecting a resist composition (par.0808-0813).
The limitation “resist composition with which a resist pattern can be formed by performing an exposure treatment and a development treatment using a first developer” in claims 1 and 7 is not a positive limitation, because the first developer is not used in the any steps of the methods in claims 1 and 7. Therefore, this limitation does not add any patentable weight to the claims 1 and 7.
Ou et al. teach that the inspecting method comprises the following steps:
-forming a resist film on a substrate provided with an antireflection film (par.0807);
-exposing the resist film (par.0810);
-developing the exposed resist film with butyl acetate (par.0810); and
-evaluating the number of defects after pattern formation (par.0823).
The step of “forming a resist film on a substrate provided with an antireflection film” of Ou et al. is equivalent to the step A1 in claim 1.
The steps of “forming a resist film on a substrate provided with an antireflection film” and “exposing the resist film” are equivalent to the step A2 in claim 7.
The examiner would like to note that the par.0022 of the specification of the instant application allows for an exposed film to be defined as “resist film formed using the resist composition”.
The step of “developing the exposed resist film with butyl acetate” of Ou et al. is equivalent to the step C1 in claim 1, and to the step C2 in claim 7, wherein butyl acetate is the claimed “second developer”.
Butyl acetate meets the limitations for the “second developer” in claims 4 and 10 of the instant application.
The steps of evaluating the number of defects after pattern formation of Ou et al. is equivalent to “a step of X1 of acquiring data for the number of defects of the resist pattern formed in the step C1” in claim 1, and to “a step X2 for acquiring data for the number of defects of the resist film dissolved by the second developer” in claim 7 of the instant application.
Ou et al. further shows number of defects after pattern formation (Table 3 in par.0854). This allows for comparing the values and it is equivalent to the step Y1 in claim 1 and the step Y2 in claim 7.
The limitation “the rate at which the resist film formed using the resist composition is dissolved by the second developer is higher than a rate at which the resist film formed using the resist composition is dissolved by the first developer” in claims 1 and 7 does not add any patentable weight to the claims, because the claims do not positively recite any steps involving the first developer.
Therefore, the method of Ou et al. is equivalent to the methods in claims 1, 4, 7, and 10 of the instant application.
With regard to claims 2, 3, 8, and 9, the examiner would like to note that the “first developer” is not positively recited in the method of claims 1 and 7 (the methods in claims 1 and 7 do not include any steps involving the first developer). Therefore, the limitations regarding the “first developer” do not add any patentable weight to the claims.
With regard to claim 5, Ou et al. teach that the resist film is exposed by ArF excimer laser (par.0808).
With regard to claims 6, 11, 18, and 20, the limitation “a ratio of the rate at which the resist film formed using the resist composition is dissolved by the second developer to the rate at which the resist film formed using the resist composition is dissolved by the first developer is more than 1.0 and 100 or less” does not add any patentable weight to the claims, because the claims do not positively recite any steps involving a first developer.
With regard to claim 12, Ou et al. teach that the resist film may be exposed with EUV radiation (par.0687) and developed with aqueous solution of tetramethylammonium hydroxide or an organic solvent (par.0699).
With regard to claim 13, Ou et al. teach that the resist composition may comprise a resin A-36 which includes the repeating unit derived from a monomer c-9:
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(Resin A-36 in Table 1-1 in par.0742 and Re-36 in Table 2-1 in par.0783). The repeating unit derived from the monomer c-9 of Ou et al. is a repeating unit having an aromatic hydrocarbon group.
With regard to claim 14, Ou et al. teach that the method further comprises a step of preparing the photoresist composition (par.0783 and Table 2-1 in par.0783).
With regard to claim 15, the resist composition of Ou et al. is equivalent to the claimed resist composition.
With regard to claims 16 and 19, Ou et al. teach a step of developing the exposed resist film with butyl acetate (par.0810).
With regard to claim 17, Ou et al. teach that the resist film is exposed by ArF excimer laser (par.0808).
Conclusion
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/ANCA EOFF/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1722
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