Improvement of material removal rate of single-crystal diamond by polishing using H^sub 2^O^sub 2^ solution

In this study, we investigated the possibility of improving the material removal rate (MRR) of a single-crystal diamond (100) substrate by a polishing technique that utilizes a chemical reaction with H2O2 solution. To demonstrate the feasibility of improving the MRR of the diamond substrate, we investigated the polishing characteristics of the substrate when employing polishing plates of different materials, such as Fe, Cu, Ni, and SUS304, in H2O2 solution. We found that the MRR was highest (33.3 nm/h) when using the Ni polishing plate. We also examined the removal characteristics of the diamond substrate in the case of polishing with and without feeding of H2O2 solution to the polishing plate under atmospheric conditions at room temperature. The results showed that polishing with feeding of H2O2 solution to the polishing plate dramatically improved the MRR to 216.7 nm/h and also maintained a low surface microroughness of less than 1 nm p-v and 0.1 nm rms.