Toxic and corrosive solutions are widely used in the preparation of abrasives and chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) of sapphire wafers, resulting in potential environmental pollution. Developing a novel green CMP technique to achieve light-emitting diode sapphire wafers is a significant challenge. In this study, a novel green CMP slurry, consisting of silica, sorbitol, aminomethyl propanol, and deionized water was developed for sapphire wafers. After CMP, the sapphire wafers were cleaned with deionized water and dried with compressed air, which is a green process. After CMP, the surface roughness R_a of the sapphire wafer surface with an area of 5 × 5 μm² was 0.098 nm, which is the lowest surface roughness reported to date for sapphire wafers. Tetrahydroxy-coordinated Al(OH)₄ ⁻ ions were produced in the alkaline CMP slurry, and chelation occurred between sorbitol and these ions. The proposed green CMP has potential applications in the semiconductor and microelectronics industries.

With the development of electronic devices such as integrated circuits toward the continual increase in power density and consumption, the efficient heat dissipation and low thermal expansion of materials become one of the most important issue. However, conventional polymers have the problem of poor thermal dissipation performance, which hinder application for electronic devices. In this work, the two-dimensional material, MXene (Ti₃C₂), is used as the reinforcement additive to optimize the thermal properties of polymers. We reported the preparation of multilayer Ti₃C₂ MXene by HF etching method and obtained few-layer Ti₃C₂ MXene by simple ultrasonication. Meanwhile, Ti₃C₂/epoxy composites were prepared by a solution blending method. The results show that the thermal properties of the composites are improved in comparison with the neat epoxy. Thermal conductivity value (0.587 W/mK) of epoxy composite with only 1.0 wt% Ti₃C₂ MXene fillers, is increased by 141.3% compared with that of neat epoxy. In addition, the composite presents an increased glass transition temperature, high thermal stability and lower coefficient of thermal expansion. This work is of great significance for the research of high-performance composite materials.

In this study, a novel approach of high speed scratching is carried out on silicon (Si) wafers at nanoscale depths of cut to investigate the fundamental mechanisms in wafering of solar cells. The scratching is conducted on a Si wafer of 150 mm diameter with an ultraprecision grinder at a speed of 8.4 to 15 m/s. Single-point diamonds of a tip radius of 174, 324 and 786 nm, respectively, are used in the study. The study finds that at the onset of chip formation, an amorphous layer is formed at the topmost of the residual scratch, followed by the pristine crystalline lattice beneath. This is different from the previous findings in low speed scratching and high speed grinding, in which there is an amorphous layer at the top and a damaged layer underneath. The final width and depth of the residual scratch at the onset of chip formation measured vary from 288 to 316 nm and from 49 to 62 nm, respectively. High pressure phases are absent from the scratch at the onset of either chip or crack formation.