Exploring the effectiveness of polyhydroxy complexing agents in sapphire chemical mechanical polishing: Combining experiments and theoretical calculation

High efficiency and environmentally friendly is the core development in sapphire chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) slurry. Therefore, complexing agents xylitol (XL) and mannitol (MA) were used to enhance the CMP performance of sapphire. The results showed that the addition of 0.2 wt% MA resulted in the optimal MRRs of C-, A- and R-plane sapphire, which are 4.878 mu m/h, 2.242 mu m/h and 2.731 mu m/h, and the surface roughness is 0.274 nm, 0.262 nm and 0.260 nm, respectively. Partical size detection, XPS, FTIR and density functional theory (DFT) calculations results showed that the addition of MA did not alter the mechanical action, but can react with Al (OH)(4)(-) to form softer complexes, which improves MRRs and surface quality.