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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 11/12/2024 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 § 102
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 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 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.
Claims 1-6 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Tatsunari (US 2004/0023403 A1).
Regarding claims 1 and 11, Tatsunari discloses a method of measuring a film thickness and corresponding apparatus (Figs.1(a), 3, 8, 9 and 12(a)), including:
a) storing, in a storage device, relationship information indicating a relationship between an absorbance spectrum of a substrate (database, Fig.9, also see ST11 of Fig.6), which has a recess (Fig.8, trenches and vias 12, 24, 34, 44, etc.) formed therein and is subjected to substrate processing (Fig.9), and a film thickness of a film (30, 40, 50) on the substrate subject to the substrate processing, the absorbance spectrum being within a range including a peak of at least one of LO phonons or TO phonons of the film present on a surface of the substrate (Figs.1(a) and 12(a), spectra include range for LO and/or TO phonon absorption);
b) performing the substrate processing on the substrate having the recess formed therein (ST22, Fig.9);
c) measuring the absorbance spectrum of the substrate subjected to the substrate processing (ST23); and
d) deriving, based on the relationship information, the film thickness of the film present on the surface of the substrate subjected to the substrate processing, from the measured absorbance spectrum (ST26).
With respect to claim 2, Tatsunari further discloses that the relationship information stores a relationship between a feature amount of the absorbance spectrum in the range of the substrate subjected to the substrate processing and the film thickness of the film (Fig.9: database and ST25); where the deriving the film thickness includes deriving the film thickness from the feature amount of the measured absorbance spectrum in the range based on the relationship information (par.0028, the multivariate analysis determines a best match of the shapes of the reference and measured spectra).
With respect to claim 3, Tatsunari further discloses that the feature amount is any one of an area of the absorbance spectrum (shape, par.0028), an intensity of the peak of the range (Fig.3(a)), a wave number of the peak of the peak of the range (Figs.1(a) and 2), and a center-of-gravity wave number in the range (shape, par.0028).
With respect to claim 4, Tatsunari further discloses that the relationship information is generated by actually measuring the absorbance spectrum in the range of the film of the substrate subjected to the substrate processing and the film thickness of the film on the substrate (ST23).
With respect to claim 5, Tatsunari further discloses that the relationship information is generated by calculating a relationship between the absorbance spectrum in the range of the film on the substrate subjected to the substrate processing and the film thickness of the film on the substrate (ST25).
With respect to claim 6, Tatsunari further discloses that the substrate processing includes a film-forming process (ST22).
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 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 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tatsunari, as applied to claim 1 above.
With respect to claim 7, while Tatsunari does not specifically disclose having the measurement light vertically incident on the substrate, the skilled artisan readily appreciates the fact that vertical absorption measurements are known for the advantage of selecting a desired area of the substrate for analysis, where oblique incidence results in a measured spectrum that is inherently an average over a much larger region of the substrate.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention for Tatsunari to measure the absorption spectrum at substantially vertical incidence in order to increase the selectivity of the measurement to a particular portion of the substrate, as recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art.
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tatsunari, as applied to claim 1 above, in view of Mizuta (JP 2004-55955 A).
With respect to claim 8, Tatsunari does not disclose the details of the physical infrared absorption measurement parameters.
Mizuta teaches the routine practice of acquiring an absorption spectrum (Fig.2) for determining film thickness on a substrate (Fig.1(A)) via oblique incidence (Fig.1(B)) as a routine means of measuring a thin film by infrared absorption spectroscopy in order to achieve a greater reaction volume between the infrared radiation and the thin film for an improved signal to noise ratio.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention for Tatsunari to measure the absorbance spectrum by making a measurement light obliquely incident on the substrate in order to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio of the measured thin film characteristics, as taught by Mizuta.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 9 and 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: while the prior art does teach the presence of trenches as a recess (Tatsunari, Fig.8 and par.0101), the prior art neither teaches nor reasonably suggests the additional limitation that the absorbance spectrum is measured as a parallel polarization (claim 9) or a vertical polarization (claim 10, as defined by Figs.7A and 7B) with respect to the trench in the substrate, as required by the combination of features as claimed in each claim.
The examples in the prior art perform IR absorption spectroscopy using polarization states being parallel or normal to the plane of the substrate (JP doc to Tomura, cited in the IDS filed 11/12/2024, Fig.3), or using polarization states with respect to the direction of the incident beam at near normal incidence (Mantz (US 2005/0118735 A1) using IR spectroscopic ellipsometry, or alternatively, performing IR absorption spectroscopy without analyzing polarization states: see at least par.0037; also see Figs.3 and 4).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Mizuta (JP doc cited above) directly correlates the wavenumber, half width, and area of LO phonon absorption peak to film thickness (see at least pars.0017 and 0024-0028 of the provided English translation);
US patent documents to Frank disclose determining the film thickness from the TO and LO phonon absorption features (pars.0043-0045, Figs.2A and 3);
Otsuki (JP 2021-195609 A) would, alone or in combination with Mizuta, reject all of the pending claims. However, the publication date of Dec.27, 2021, falls within the 1 year grace period defined by the effective filing date of the instant claims of May 17, 2022. Combined with the fact that the inventive entities are identical, and that the documents are commonly owned, the Otsuki document is not available as prior art under all provisions of 35 USC 102(b)(1)&(2); and
The remaining prior art of record teaches state of the art trench manufacturing and substrate characterization.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to THOMAS R ARTMAN whose telephone number is (571)272-2485. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday 10am-6:30pm.
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THOMAS R. ARTMAN
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2884
/THOMAS R ARTMAN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2884
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