A Novel Strategy for the Synthesis of CeO2/CeF3 Composite Powders with Improved Suspension Stability and Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) Performance

Abstract

CeO2 is one of the most promising materials applied in chemical mechanical polishing industry. However, due to the high hardness of CeO2, a further surface modification is usually required, especially when polishing a soft substrate, such as fused quartz and optical disk. In this work, we reported a novel process for the synthesis of CeO2/CeF3 composite powders which showed improved suspension stability and CMP properties. Ce2(CO3)3 and HF were employed as the precursor materials for Ce and F, respectively, which were simply milled and annealed at different temperatures to get the composite powders. The results showed that the morphology of the powders changed from microrods to grape-like shapes which had a smaller particle size. And the XRD results confirmed the formation of CeO2/CeF3 composite phases after the HF addition. The suspension stability and CMP property measurements indicated that the change of particle morphologies and the formation of composite structure benefited the polishing process for fused quartz substrate, and a more planar surface was obtained. All these results indicated that the current processing was of great potentials for the synthesis and practical applications of ceria-based CMP slurries.