Material removal rate model for chemical–mechanical polishing of single-crystal SiC substrates using agglomerated diamond abrasive

Material removal mechanisms are essential for the selection of polishing slurries and parameter optimization of chemical–mechanical polishing (CMP) processes. This study established a material removal rate (MRR) model for CMP of single-crystal SiC substrates using a fixed agglomerated diamond (AD) abrasive pad (FADAP). The distribution of the polishing pressure between the AD abrasive and FADAP matrix was examined, and the influence of the abrasive and polishing parameters on the MRR was revealed. Furthermore, single-factor experiments were conducted to validate the rationality of the MRR model. The experiments demonstrated that when the thickness of the surface-affected layer of the single-crystal SiC substrate in the MRR model was set to 5 nm, the error between the calculated and experimental values of the model could be controlled to within 20%. This result experimentally verified the validity of the MRR model and its associated assumptions. Moreover, the MRR of the CMP process of a single-crystal SiC substrate reached 36.26 μm/h with a polishing pressure of 27.6 kPa and an AD abrasive primary particle size range of 7–10 μm. Therefore, the feasibility of efficiently processing single-crystal SiC substrates using an FADAP was theoretically confirmed.