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Catalytic mechanism of tribochemical mechanical polishing on (0001) C-face of single crystal 6H-SiC substrate

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Abstract

Aiming at these problems of low efficiency, high cost, and environmental pollution in the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process of single crystal SiC substrates, a dry-type tribochemical mechanical polishing (DTCMP) method was proposed, and catalysts were added to enhance its efficiency, and the mechanism of catalyst action was investigated. In this study, different contents of nanocatalysts Fe2O3 and Fe3O4 were added to the DTCMP experiments on 6H-SiC substrates, and the material removal characteristics of SiC substrates were investigated under different polishing pressures and rotational speeds with different types of catalysts. Surface morphology, hardness change, surface elements, and crystalline structure of SiC before and after the polishing were analyzed using white light interferometer, nanoindenter, scanning electron microscopes, and X-ray diffractometer. The results show that the catalytic performance of the Fe3O4 catalyst was superior to that of the Fe2O3 catalyst and that the Fe3O4 catalyst can catalyze the production of more ·OH from Na2CO3-1.5H2O2 during the assisted polishing process. The material removal rate (MRR) was higher with the addition of catalyst than without, with MRR as high as 709.2 nm/h and surface roughness as low as 2.257 nm. Based on previous research results, this DTCMP achieves higher MRR compared with traditional CMP. In addition, the catalyst can promote the oxidation reaction on the SiC surface, accelerate the generation of surface oxide films, and thus reduce the surface hardness. Catalyst-assisted DTCMP exhibits superior performance in terms of efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and environmental sustainability, which can be an efficient method for preparing ultra-smooth SiC semiconductor materials and may inspire new ideas for their high-efficiency production.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. U1804142) and the Science and Technology Research Project of Henan Province (Grant No.192102210058).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Henan Institute of Science and Technology, Xinxiang, 453003, China

    Mingpu Xue, Wen Xiao, Tianyi Zhang, Zhankui Wang & Jianxiu Su

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  1. Mingpu Xue
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  3. Tianyi Zhang
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Contributions

Mingpu Xue: investigation, data curation, and writing—original draft preparation. Wen Xiao: investigation and resources. Tianyi Zhang: investigation. Zhankui Wang: supervision and funding acquisition. Jianxiu Su: conceptualization, methodology, validation, and writing—review & editing, supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition. The authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Xue, M., Xiao, W., Zhang, T. et al. Catalytic mechanism of tribochemical mechanical polishing on (0001) C-face of single crystal 6H-SiC substrate. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 131, 2311–2323 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-023-11494-y

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