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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 07/26/2023. The submission is following the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claims 1-3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zheng et al., (CN117538525A) in view of Groger et al., (US5,606,633).
Regarding claim 1, Zheng et al., disclose an antimonene-based surface plasmon resonance prism coupler sensor (page 1, lines 42-43, “an SPR biosensor and a detection”) comprising:
a prism having a surface (4, Fig.1);
a gold thin film layer (5, Fig.1 and page 3, line 34, “5 is the noble metal material layer”, and line 50 “The noble metal material layer is preferably a gold layer”) disposed over the surface of the prism (see Fig.1) and an antimonene layer (7) disposed on the gold thin film layer (5, see Fig.1, the antimonene layer 7 disposed on/over the layer 5).
Zheng et al., does not disclose a tantalum pentoxide thin film layer as claimed. Groger et al., disclose a tantalum pentoxide thin film layer (7/113, Fig.17 and col.8, line 11 “the high refractive index layer 113 is made of a high refractive index material such as tantalum pentoxide”) disposed on surface of a substrate, and a gold thin film layer (9/111) disposed on the tantalum pentoxide thin film layer (see Fig. 17). Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Zheng et al., to utilizing the teaching of Groger et al., to achieve better control of the surface plasmon resonance response.
Regarding claim 2, Zheng et al., in view of Groger et al., as discussed in claim 1, do not disclose a thickness of the gold thin film layer being greater than a thickness of the tantalum pentoxide thin film layer and a thickness of the antimonene layer as claimed. However,
Zheng et al., disclose the gold film layer (40-60nm, page 3, line 53) being thicker than the antimonene layer (2 to 5 nm, page 4, line 9). Groger et al., disclose the tantalum pentoxide thin film layer (50 nm). In combination, a thickness of the gold thin film layer (40-60nm ) would be greater than a thickness of the tantalum pentoxide thin film layer (50 nm) and a thickness of the antimonene layer (2 to 5 nm) as claimed. Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Zheng et al., to select the thickness of the antimonene layer, as taught by Groger et al., to allows effective tuning of plasmon response to be achieved.
Regarding claim 3, Zheng et al., in view of Groger et al., as discussed in claim 1, Zheng et al., disclose the antimonene layer being composed of a plurality of layers of antimonene (page 4, line 12, “The two-dimensional optoelectronic material layer is provided with an antimonene layer. The thickness of the antimonene layer is preferably 1 to 10 nm, most preferably 3 nm”. This indicates that the antimonene layer inherently comprises multiple atomic layers. However, if not, selecting a disclosed antimonene layer to contain multiple/plurality of antimonene layers would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art for maximizing SPR signal response. Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Zheng et al., in view of Groger et al., to optimize performance such as maximizing SPR signal response.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-10 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 and any intervening claims.
Regarding claim 4, the prior art fails to disclose a reporter nucleic acid set comprising a first reporter nucleic acid and a second reporter nucleic acid, wherein the first reporter nucleic acid specifically binds to the capture nucleic acid, and the second reporter nucleic acid specifically binds to the capture nucleic acid and the first assistant nucleic acid.
Claims 5-10 depend on claim 4.
Conclusion
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/M.T.T./Examiner, Art Unit 2878
/GEORGIA Y EPPS/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2878
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