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 § 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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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(s) 1-8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over La et al. (US 8,043,525).
With respect to claims 1, 3, 4 La describes a wet etching composition comprising: HF, an inorganic acid, water, and an organic acid including acetic acid, citric acid, formic acid, lactic acid, malic acid, and/or propionic acid or claimed a reactant initiator (col. 2, line 65-col. 3, line 5, 40-45; col. 4, lines 3-10). Unlike claimed invention, even though he doesn’t explicitly teach the composition comprises an acid mixture of HF, nitric, phosphoric, and acetic acid. However, he teaches the inorganic “may include one or more of nitric acid, phosphoric acid” (col. 3, lines 25-30) and the organic acid “may include one or more of acetic acid, citric acid, formic acid, lactic acid, malic acid, and/or propionic acid” (col. 4, lines 3-10). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled in the art that acids can comprises a mixture of nitric acid, phosphoric acid, acetic along with the HF and other organic acids including citric acid, formic acid, lactic acid, malic acid, and/or propionic acid as suggested by La. This would provide claimed etching composition with expected results.
With respect to claim 2, the acids of citric acid, formic acid, lactic acid, malic acid, and/or propionic acid are the same acids used by the claimed invention; therefore they would be able to reduce the nitric acid to nitrous acid.
With respect to claims 5-8, they describe the compounds that are alternate compounds along with the organic acid compound as cited in claim 3; therefore, they are not necessarily part of the composition.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 9-11 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.
Claim 9 and its dependent claims 10 and 11 are allowed over the applied prior art La because even though La teaches a composition contains the same acid mixture as described above; however, La doesn’t teach that the composition contains 10-30 wt% of nitric acid, 0.5-15 wt% of hydrofluoric acid, 0.1-30 wt% of phosphoric acid, 10-50 wt% of acetic acid, 0.01-3 wt% of the reaction initiator, and a remaining balance of water.
Claims 12-17 are allowed over the applied prior art La because even though La teaches a composition contains the same acid mixture as described above; however, La doesn’t teach using the composition in the etching method including the steps of “preparing the silicon substrate on which a first silicon layer doped with impurities at a first doping concentration and a second silicon layer provided as an epitaxial layer and doped with impurities at a second doping concentration different from the first doping concentration are laminated; and selectively etching the first silicon layer with an etching composition, wherein the etching composition includes: an acid mixture including hydrofluoric acid, nitric acid, phosphoric acid, and acetic acid; a reaction initiator configured to initiate a reaction between the first silicon layer and the acid mixture, the reaction initiator including a reducing organic compound; and water.”
Claims 18-20 are allowed over the applied prior art La because even though La teaches a composition contains the same acid mixture as described above; however, La doesn’t teach using the composition in the etching method including the steps of “preparing a silicon substrate including a first silicon layer doped with impurities at a first doping concentration and a second silicon layer doped with impurities at a second doping concentration and having a rear surface close to the first silicon layer and a front surface close to the second silicon layer; forming a first device pattern on the front surface of the silicon substrate; selectively etching and removing the first silicon layer through the etching composition of claim 1; and forming a second device pattern on the rear surface from which the first silicon layer is removed.”
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/DUY VU N DEO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1713
7/23/2026
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