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 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.
Claim(s) 1-9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Daniels (US 2018/0216000).
Daniels teaches graphene or silicene or transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) 2D material [0005, 0008].
Daniels teaches TMDC monolayers MoS.sub.2, WS.sub.2, MoSe.sub.2, WSe.sub.2 and MoTe.sub.2 have a direct band gap, and can be used in electronics as transistors and in optics as emitters and detectors. Group 4 to 7 TMDCs predominantly crystallise in layered structures, leading to anisotropy in their electrical, chemical, mechanical and thermal properties. Each layer comprises a hexagonally packed layer of metal atoms sandwiched between two layers of chalcogen atoms via covalent bonds. Neighboring layers are weakly bound by van der Waals interactions, which may easily be broken by mechanical or chemical methods to create mono- and few-layer structures [0008].
Daniels teaches [0009] the TMDC monolayer crystal structure has no inversion center, which allows access to a new degree of freedom of charge carriers, namely the k-valley index, and to open up a new field of physics: “Valleytronics”.
[0010] The strong spin-orbit coupling in TMDC monolayers leads to a spin-orbit splitting of hundreds meV in the valence band and a few meV in the conduction band, which allows control of the electron spin by tuning the excitation laser photon energy.
[0011] The work on TMDC monolayers is an emerging research and development field since the discovery of the direct bandgap and the potential applications in electronics and valley physics. TMDCs may be combined with other 2D materials like graphene and hexagonal boron nitride to make van der Waals heterostructure devices (layered structures as claimed).
Daniels further teaches [0012] a semiconductor can absorb photons with energy larger than or equal to its bandgap. This means that light with a shorter wavelength is absorbed. Semiconductors are typically efficient emitters if the minimum of the conduction band energy is at the same position in k-space as the maximum of the valence band, i.e., the band gap is direct. The band gap of bulk TMDC material down to a thickness of two monolayers is still indirect, so the emission efficiency is lower compared to monolayered materials. The emission efficiency is about 10.sup.4 times greater for a TMDC monolayer than for bulk material.
Regarding claims to a method, Daniels teaches a method of preparing 2D nanoparticles comprising: forming a metal-amine complex; combining the metal-amine complex with a chalcogen source in at least one solvent to form a solution; heating the solution to a first temperature for a first period of time; and subsequently heating the solution to a second temperature that is higher than the first temperature for a second period of time (see claim 1).
The organo-chalcogen compound is an alkyl thiol (which has an OH group per claims 1 and 4; see claims).
Regarding claims to specific Zeeman effects or triple spin, these are properties of the material and the material of Daniels would be expected to have the same properties given the same composition and formation processes absent a showing to the contrary; pr alternatively it would be obvious to one of ordinary skill to have provided at the time of filing due to teaching of use for the same purpose (emitters) and composition.
Conclusion
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/DANIEL H MILLER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1783