Abstract
Sapphire is an anisotropic material with excellent physical and chemical properties and is used as a substrate material in various fields such as LED (light emitting diode), power semiconductor, superconductor, sensor, and optical devices. Sapphire is processed into the final substrate through multi-wire saw, double-side lapping, heat treatment, diamond mechanical polishing, and chemical mechanical polishing. Among these, chemical mechanical polishing is the key process that determines the final surface quality of the substrate. Recent studies have reported that the material removal characteristics during chemical mechanical polishing changes according to the crystal orientations, however, detailed analysis of this phenomenon has not reported. In this work, we carried out chemical mechanical polishing of C(0001), R($1{\bar{1}}02$), and A($11{\bar{2}}0$) substrates with different sapphire crystal planes, and analyzed the effect of crystal orientation on the material removal characteristics and their correlations. We measured the material removal rate and frictional force to determine the material removal phenomenon, and performed nano-indentation to evaluate the material characteristics before and after the reaction. Our findings show that the material removal rate and frictional force depend on the crystal orientation, and the chemical reaction between the sapphire substrate and the slurry accelerates the material removal rate during chemical mechanical polishing.
