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 Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
Claim(s) 1 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Bendall, et al (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2017/0178882 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Bendall discloses a method comprising:
Directing an ion beam (110) to a region of a sample (160) to liberate charged particles (130) from the region of the sample, wherein the directed ion beam is pulsed at a first repetition rate (paragraph 0047);
Deflecting a first subset of the liberated charged particles from a first path to a second path different from the first path in response to a gate signal synchronized with the repetition rate of the pulsed ion beam (Fig. 2; paragraphs 0021 and 0051 – at the beginning of each time-of-flight cycle, pulsing electronics 260 applies a push-out voltage to push-out plate 230 and a pull-out voltage to grid 240, resulting in deflection of secondary ions into a detection path orthogonal to their original path); and
Detecting the first subset of the liberated charged particles in a time of flight mass spectrometer to determine information about the sample (paragraphs 0051-0052), wherein the gate signal sets a common reference time for the TOF mass spectrometer for the first subset of charged particles liberated by each pulse of the ion beam (paragraph 0054 – the TOF-MS signal recording means is coordinated with the timing of pulsing electronics 260).
Conclusion
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/MICHAEL MASKELL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2878 13 June 2026
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