Tribology of Natural Whetstones

―Development of a Laminated Grinding Stone for Semiconductor Materials―

Abstract

Productivity can be improved, if a mirror finished surface is obtained with grinding instead of polishing. The quality of the surfaces, finished with conventional grinding wheels composed of fine abrasives, is worse than the one finished by polishing. In this article, we introduce a new layer-structured grinding wheel, based on a natural whetstone called Awasedo, and a grinding wheel which has product layer of silica and mica. The ability of the grinding wheel is also described in the case of grinding a 3-inch silicon wafer under constant-pressure process. And that gives a mirror surface with the roughness of 1nm Ra and 7nm Rz was obtained.