Novel Reactive Chemical Mechanical Polishing (RCMP) Technology for fabrication of Large, Non-flat SiC mirrors

Silicon Carbide (SiC) due to its superior thermal and mechanical properties serves as an attractive candidate as mirror material. The manufacturing of such mirrors is a critical challenge because of the hardness and chemical inertness of the material. The current state-of-the-art polishing methods are either typically very slow or introduce a high density of defects, scratches, or large stresses. Sinmat, in collaboration with Penn State University, plans to investigate a novel Reactive Chemical Mechanical Planarization (RCMP) method to rapidly polish non-planar SiC mirrors. This method is expected to be (2X to 10X) faster than conventional methods and has the ability to reduce/eliminate high and mid frequency surface roughness introduced by other methods. In the Phase I of this project, we plan to demonstrate the feasibility of this RCMP process to rapidly polish non-flat SiC mirrors, whereas in Phase II we plan to integrate the process with manufacturing companies, to fabricate large SiC mirrors.