Development of Highly Efficient Combined Polishing Method for Single-Crystal Silicon Carbide

Abstract

The aim of this research is to develop a combined polishing technology for single-crystal silicon carbide (SiC) wafers, which is known to be difficult to process due to its high hardness. This paper proposes a combined polishing method based on converting SiC into a material with a relatively low hardness and then polishing this material using abrasive particles with a higher hardness. An electrochemical technique was tried to reduce the hardness of SiC. The effectiveness of the combined technique is experimentally demonstrated. In addition, the temporal changes of the thickness of SiO2 layer and the relationship between the electrochemical machining current and the thickness of SiO2 layer are shown.