# Influence of HFCVD Parameters on Diamond Coatings and Process Investigation of Sapphire Wafer Lapping

## TL;DR

This paper presents a new method using diamond coatings to improve the lapping of sapphire wafers, achieving high material removal rates and good surface quality.

## Contribution

A novel process for HFCVD diamond tools to efficiently lap sapphire wafers with controlled surface morphology.

## Key findings

- Prismatic CVD diamond coatings achieved the highest material removal rate of 1.7 μm/min.
- Spherical diamond coatings produced the lowest surface roughness of 0.35 μm on sapphire wafers.
- Surface morphology of diamond coatings was controllable and influenced by gas pressure, methane concentration, and substrate temperature.

## Abstract

Aiming at the key problems of the material removal rate and surface integrity of existing tools in the lapping of sapphire hard and brittle crystals, an efficient lapping tool has been developed to explore a new process for HFVCD (hot filament chemical vapor deposition) diamond tools to efficiently lap sapphire wafers. With the premise of ensuring the surface roughness of the wafer is Ra ≤ 0.5 μm, the material removal rate is increased to more than 1 μm/h. To explore a high-efficiency lapping process for sapphire wafers using HFCVD diamond tools. The influence of key preparation parameters on the surface characteristics of CVD (chemical vapor deposition) diamond films was systematically investigated. Three types of CVD diamond coating tools with distinct surface morphologies were fabricated. These tools were subsequently employed to conduct lapping experiments on sapphire wafers in order to evaluate their processing performance. The experimental results demonstrate that the gas pressure, methane concentration, and substrate temperature collectively influenced the surface morphology of the diamond coatings. The fabricated coatings exhibited well-defined grain boundaries and displayed pyramidal, prismatic and spherical features, corresponding to high-quality microcrystalline and nanocrystalline diamond layers. In the lapping experiments, the prismatic CVD diamond coating tool exhibited the highest material removal rate, reaching approximately 1.7 μm/min once stabilized. The spherical diamond coating tool produced the lowest surface roughness on the lapped sapphire wafers, with a value of about 0.35 μm. Surface morphology-controllable diamond tools were used for the lapping processing of the sapphire wafers. This achieved a good surface quality and high removal rate and provided new ideas for the precision machining of brittle hard materials in the plane or even in the curved surface.