Silicon carbide (SiC) single crystals have been used as the substrates of a new generation of wide band-gap
semiconductors due to their unparalleled combination of high breakdown voltage, extreme temperature tolerance,
mobility and radiation hardness. For their applications, the SiC substrates need to be machined with nanometric surface
quality as well as high form accuracy. However, the superior properties of the materials render their machinability
extremely difficult. In this paper, we report the form error and surface roughness of the 6H-SiC (0001) substrate
mechanically polished using 3 μm diamond powders in two different polishing processes. One process was
concentrated-load polishing; the other was surface polishing. The polished surfaces were evaluated using white light
interferometry and atomic force microscopy (AFM) for assessment of two- and three-dimensional topographies
including form error and surface roughness. We found that a large form error was produced on the 6H-SiC (0001)
substrate in the concentrated-load polishing. The root-mean-square (RMS) surface roughness of approximately 4 nm was
resulted. Surface polishing of the 6H-SiC (0001) substrate remarkably improved form accuracy. The RMS surface
roughness of approximately 2.5 nm was obtained.
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