A Novel Grinding Technique for 4H-SiC Single-Crystal Wafers Using Tribo-Catalytic Abrasives

Diamond abrasives are generally used to machine silicon carbide (SiC) single crystals because of the high hardness of those crystals. Although Chemo-Mechanical Polishing (CMP) employs abrasives softer than the SiC single crystals together with oxidizing agents in order to avoid mechanical damage to the surface of SiC single-crystal wafers, none has reported so far the use of abrasive wheels other than diamond for grinding large SiC single-crystal wafers. The current study revealed that a novel grinding technique using non-diamond abrasives such as ceria (CeO2) can efficiently machine large SiC single-crystal wafers of 100 mm in diameter due hypothetically to the nature of newly named tribo-catalytic abrasives, and is promising to minimize the surface damage prior to the final CMP step.