Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) of wide band gap materials for optoelectronics and power electronics applications

CMP of Wide band gap (SiC and GaN) substrates are plagued by difficulties owing to its chemical inertness; low removal rate and high hardness. Sinmat has developed a chemical mechanical planarization process that gives high removal rate to achieve rapid atomic scale smoothening of SiC and GaN substrates. In this article we discuss the CMP processing of SiC and GaN substrates and characterization of the processed surface. The CMP processed surface of SiC and GaN shows roughness average less than 3 Å and 5 Å respectively.